Chickens En-Route to Roost

This may ring a bell. The hasty and populist legislative mania of the Blair years is producing predictable consequences. I will put my schadenfreude on hold for the moment while feeling grateful that the Brown government's priorities seem to lack Blair's obsession with law'n'order as defined by the Mail/Sun axis.
So far, so could-be-worse.

Here's The Guardian's view.

More About DJs

District Judges (Magistrates' Courts) to give them their full title, are the successors to the old Stipendiary Magistrates. They are qualified lawyers, many of them former court clerks, and sitting alone they can exercise the power of a bench of three magistrates. There are about 150 full-time DJ(MC)s, as opposed to about 30,000 magistrates. Most of them sit in the big cities, but following recent reforms they are now deployed by the Circuits and can be sent where they are needed. The sort of work for which they are best suited is long trials, where it can be difficult to assemble a lay bench, or those involving complex points of law. Westminster court has special jurisdiction to deal with terrorist and extradition cases, and that is where Tim Workman, the Chief Magistrate is based, having been reluctantly ousted from historic Bow Street, which has been sold off. DJs can, as we have seen in the Richards case, sit with JPs but it is rare, and they are usually discouraged from doing so, but they do still sit with legal advisers. There is some talk of them sitting without a qualified clerk in the future, but they would still need a clerical assistant of some sort.
Big city courts may have up to half a dozen DJs backed up by a bench of JPs, but smaller courts such as mine have a share in one or two. Plenty of courts never see a DJ except on special occasions. The work is supposed to be shared equally between lay and professional benches, but one or two old-school DJs in big courts can prove a bit sniffy about low-level no-bus-ticket type cases. High-throughput courts such as youth, drug, and family sometimes have one or two DJs who specialise in that type of work.
Historically some magistrates have been suspicious about the spread of DJs, and I used to be one of them. But the fact that there are only about 150 DJs against 30,000 JPs seems to give the lie to a stealthy conspiracy to get rid of the lay bench.

Jam Today, Jam Tomorrow

I have just heard the usual tales of woe from the BBC traffic news, and thought myself lucky that I don't have to go anywhere outside my home town today. I have the impression, admittedly not backed up by evidence, that post-accident road closures are getting longer and longer. That is a likely consequence of the police policy to treat all fatal accidents as a crime scene, thus requiring painstaking gathering of evidence. That's fine - if we are now going to imprison drivers for a simple mistake that results in a death, then proper analysis of the scene will be required. The downside of course is that drivers will have to fume in jams more frequently, and for longer.
I drive in France quite a lot and the policy there seems to be more robust. The first priority there is to get the traffic moving, and I have often been directed to scrunch over the broken glass and debris to get on my way.
Attitudes to road deaths differ worldwide and in the developing world trnsport is a major public health hazard. A documentary on Mumbai's railways that was shown last night suggested that in that city alone over 3000 people die each year walking on or across railway tracks. When we had an accident in England that killed a handful of people we practically shut down the system.

Wasteful and Callous

There is a man in prison in London as I write. He is severely mentally ill, and speaks no English at all. He is charged with assaulting two people, but his solicitor, even with an interpreter, is unable to communicate with him. He is of course in the hospital wing of the prison where I understand that he is being decently treated. The consensus is that he needs to be transferred to a secure mental health ward. In a grotesque game of pass-the-parcel two mental health trusts are arguing about which one of them will take him (the prison being in one trust's area, the location of the offences in another). We were told that this will take at least two weeks, and more likely four, to sort out, and in the meantime he remains in prison. The public will eventually fund his care but while officials squabble over which pot to take the money from he is being cared for in prison, at a cost that probably far exceeds that of a mental unit. My colleagues and I made full enquiries in open court and we found that there is nothing at all that we can do about it, and that this is a situation that occurs quite often. Frustrated by our inability to achieve anything in the case, we remanded him back into custody.

Who Does He Think He is?

This is an example of a police officer trying to enlarge his job description to include 'judge' and 'jury'.
Get this straight, Constable Brain: (No, I resist the temptation). Sentencing is a judicial matter to be dealt with by the judiciary. If you threaten anyone with a particular sentence you exceed your powers. Your job is to bring offenders before a court. Thereafter it is out of your hands.

Another Slice of Salami, Sir?

From Sky News:

Footballer Teddy Sheringham has been cautioned for perverting the course of justice after his arrest for allegedly giving false details about a speeding offence.
The former England striker, who won 51 caps, was one of three footballers arrested in May in connection with the alleged offence, which he later categorically denied.
Scotland Yard would not confirm the footballer's name but said: "A 41-year-old man was cautioned today for perverting the course of justice".

To be cautioned, you have to admit the offence. The going rate for an offence such as this is custody, but Mr. Footballer has got a caution. This was decided administratively, in private, and by public servants without intervention by an impartial and independent judiciary.
But hey, just think of the goals he scored. To those of you who aren't famous and who don't play football, I repeat my advice not to try to lie your way out of a speeding ticket, because you may well go to prison as a result. To the rich sporty and famous, don't bother lads. The Prosecution Team will see you all right.
This is a bloody outrage.

They Do Things Differently In America (no. 872)

I stumbled across this blog, and it certainly gave me something to think about. Prosecutors in parts of the USA are, it seems, to be allowed to go into court armed (or 'tooled up' as they say on my patch).
The idea of knowingly allowing weapons to be taken into court is stupid enough; but by prosecutors? Most of the CPS I deal with are people I would not trust to feed my goldfish, even if I had any goldfish. If they turn up in my court packing heat - I'm going to look for something - anything - safer to do in my spare time..

English As She Is Spoke (Revisited)

A couple of years ago I posted this. My good friend Jones has just returned from France, and he kindly brought me a menu from the (apparently excellent) Hostellerie de la Poste in Avallon. Aside from the unlikely name for a posh hotel (can you think of one in England named after the Post Office?) the English descriptions of the dishes on the very tempting menu are exotic to say the least. The Menu Classique looks wonderful, as it should for 50€ a pop, boisson non compris. How do you fancy any of these?

Spotted ham pot "house" radishes crunching with the mustard emulsion, or
Marbled ocean in its frost with grasses of summer and balsamic vinaigrette, or
Eggs poached in red wine with compotée of leeks, plugs and mushrooms, or
Gun of lamb roasted in crust of grass, juice to rosemary and vegetables of provence, or
Choice of refined cheeses with whish, or
Thousand sheet with tepid roast apple and its purée lacté with caramel, or
Tart sanded with the pears vigneronnes and bays of blackcurrant to sweet almonds.

There is more, but I think that I have given you a taste. M.Francois-Xavier Gross is by all accounts a damn good chef, but he would do himself a favour if he hired a young English trainee before going to print on the next menu.
When I was recently in Brittany there were plenty of duff translations on offer, so much so that I would always ask for the French menu if I were offered the Anglais version, but it is only when the cuisine becomes very haute indeed that the heights of absurdity are scaled.

A Nice Day

There's nothing to beat a nice straightforward trial, especially when it gets off to a 10 am start with no complications, and moves to a verdict at 3.45 pm and a sentence twenty minutes later. That's what I was given this week and it was a welcome change from several heavy days in the remand court. It was an allegation of Common Assault, and the issues were mostly factual - who did what, and was he acting reasonably when he did it?
We heard from the (at this stage alleged) victim who gave clear and confident evidence, and who was, unless I am very much mistaken, a former police officer. We heard from six witnesses in all, only one of them truly independent. This lady had been snatching a crafty cigarette outside her place of work, and saw most of the incident. Another lady gave evidence for the defence, but let slip that fact that she knew someone who works with the defendant and that her daughter was a 'friend' of the accused. When she responded to a question with "he was only doing his job" we knew that her evidence should be treated with caution. We then watched five minutes of CCTV that was helpful if not conclusive. We were lucky to be faced by competent advocates - a Crown Prosecutor of much experience and a solid and mature local solicitor.
We retired to consider the case and agreed on a guilty verdict within a few minutes. Best of all, the assault being relatively minor and the defendant being a man of previous good character, there was no need to order reports with a view to a community or custodial sentence, so we got on with it there and then.
A Conditional Discharge and compensation to the victim seemed spot on to us so that's what we did. Unfortunately for the defendant the conviction will have implications for his job, but that was not for us to consider.
As a final bonus I was not the Chairman, because I was sitting in on a Chairman Under Training, so I had plenty of time to absorb the ebb and flow of the evidence, and the nuances of the witnesses' testimony. A good day.

All-Time Great Legal Jokes No. 229

"You have been found Not Guilty by a Limerick jury, and leave this court with no other stain on your character."

(Irish juries did not always take kindly to circuit-court judges coming into their counties to try local people).