Bad Character

It is becoming increasingly common to see applications to admit a defendant's bad character, in particular where his record suggests a propensity to commit offences similar to the one before the court. I have seen a couple of these recently, and in both cases the defendant had nearly 200 previous convictions, so it is hardly surprising that the CPS wanted them in.
The Crown has to make an application to adduce bad character, and that is often done at a preliminary hearing. This is not always the case though, and the law provides that a bench may hear the application, decide not to allow it, and then proceed to trial having read through the defendant's previous convictions, which we are then expected to put out of our minds. Well, we do our best, but it is a challenging feat of mental gymnastics. If little Billy has nine previous convictions for driving while disqualified, but is fighting this one because he claims only to have been a passenger, one does tend to draw certain conclusions - which is what Parliament intended, of course.

Will Britain Go This Way?

There is an interesting piece in The Independent about the extraordinary American prison system.

Apocrypha (23)

One of the District Judges based at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court is a member of the Magic Circle. I have seen him performing his magic stuff and he is very good.

A Wrong and Dangerous Trend

The Times is concerned about the enormous increase in the number of Penalty Notices for Disorder (PNDs). This is the Government's entirely bogus strategy for increasing the number of Offences Brought to Justice (OBTJs). Here is the news item.
Together with Conditional Cautions and other non-court disposals the police and CPS will increasingly take on the task of imposing sanctions on the populace. At the moment they rely on the fact that many people put £80 down to experience, reasoning that it is cheaper than taking a day off to go to court, and is not a conviction (but it does go on their PNC record and will be shown to any bench they appear before in the future).
Now watch for mission creep, as increasingly serious offences are dealt with behind closed doors.
It isn't justice.

Victim

The victim was a public-service worker, in a fairly ordinary capacity. Going about her duties she was confronted by a man who was rude to her, and who added some crude and threatening sexual innuendo. There were members of the public nearby, but the victim prudently retreated into a nearby office and locked herself in.
The man who had confronted her was arrested and charged, and then pleaded not guilty, so the victim had to give evidence in court. I chaired the trial.
She spoke from behind a screen, so we could see her, as could the clerk and the lawyers, but the accused could not. She was provided with Witness Support, something that is very well done in my court, mostly by trained volunteers.
She was clearly in a state of severe anxiety, and her body language suggested that she was not at all happy. Nevertheless she gave a clear account of the incident, and when it was the (unrepresented) defendant's turn to cross-examine her I was determined not to allow any intimidation - but there was no need as he only asked a couple of questions. We convicted him. In the prosecution's opening address we had heard that the victim had been on light duties in the six months since the incident, and we could understand why.
As these things go, the case was relatively down-scale: no blow was struck, but the impact on the victim was clearly long-term and serious. Sometimes even the calmest of us can be thrown off our life's track by a threatening incident such as this one.
We put the case off to be sentenced by another bench, our reasons form indicating that we felt it was in the custody band.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

The side effects of the last decade's Press panics about crime and criminals have not just been to scare old ladies to cower under their duvets, but to invest the criminal classes with an almost supernatural power to offend and to get away with it. In fact most of the run-of-the-mill defendants who pass in front of my bench fall into the categories of: Drug addicts, mentally ill, socially crippled (eg the appalling number of offenders coming from so-called Council Care) ill-educated unemployables, the terminally attitude-challenged, and the unlucky. The simply vicious and psychopathic are there all right, but in relatively small numbers.
The common thread that runs through most of the cases I deal with is good old fashioned stupidity, such as:-
Man parks car. Traffic warden approaches to issue ticket. "Don't do that" orders man. "Sorry, have to do it" says warden. Man threatens then attacks warden with weapon. Warden retreats and calls police. Police are updated in real time by operators of high resolution state-of-the-art CCTV. Man arrested. Man's car turns out to contain dealer-type amounts of Class A. Man's house searched. Lots more drugs, scales and other paraphenalia present. And a sawn-off shotgun.
Bottom line:- a £60 parking ticket turns into a potential eight year prison sentence. Clever? I don't think so.

Caption Competition

The picture above seems to cry out for a speech bubble or two. What are the two at the front saying to make the one at the back close his eyes? Any takers?

There might even be a prize if anyone is funny enough and if I don't go all Catherine Tate.

My effort: Left Judge: "Sammy's ecstatic" Right Judge: "Why so?" LJ: He's been invited on to the Queens' Bench".

What's The Matter With These People?

I did a quick Google image search for 'pit bull terrier' to illustrate the previous post and I stumbled across some horrifying images such as these:-



There are lots of sites stressing how sweet and loveable these dogs are, and how, when they maul a child, as they do from time to time, it is not the dog's fault. Let's get this straight:- these dogs are bred for one purpose only, and they are innately vicious. Any pitbull (and, to a lesser extent, any dog) can revert to its ancestral nature in a flash. The people who allow a pitbull to curl up with a baby are irresponsible sentimental idiots.

They Are Still About

The infamous Dangerous Dogs Act was passed in 1991 in a Parliamentary panic about a number of vicious attacks that had taken place. Among other things it required the neutering of pit-bull and other fighting types, so by now the breed should more or less have died out. It didn't work though: there were recently arrests in respect of ownership of fighting-type dogs in, I seem to recall, Liverpool, and quite recently a man was arrested in West London after more than twenty pit-bulls were found in his one-bedroom maisonette in tiny cages. Some were young puppies, some were adult dogs, many bearing scars or even fresh wounds from fighting.
The man got six months, and the court ordered the destruction of the dogs, but no doubt there will be more in the future.
Can you imagine what the smell must have been like in that maisonette?

Bail or No Bail

The actor Chris Langham, who was yesterday convicted of offences involving child pornography, has been remanded in custody while pre-sentence reports are prepared. He will be sentenced next month. The judge said:

“In my judgment, and I’ve thought long and hard about this, it would be a misplaced kindness to give you bail at this stage.”

I know exactly what he meant. It is often more humane to send someone to start serving their sentence straight away than it is to leave them on bail for a few weeks knowing what will happen later. We are sometimes asked for bail pending appeal, and lawyers can be relied upon to stress that if the appeal succeeds their client will have been unfairly treated. The senior judge at the Crown Court to which we commit has asked us not to grant bail pending appeal because that puts a bit of pressure on the judges who don't want to see a cat-and-mouse situation. I did raise my eyebrows last month though, when we hardened our hearts and refused bail to someone we had just sent to prison, quoting the Resident Judge's advice, only for that selfsame judge to bail him a few days later.
Sometimes, too, there is rough justice in an offender serving a week or two inside, giving him a taste of prison life, but without leaving him there for long enough to start adapting to it.
If Langham gets a suspended sentence (possible, especially combined with compulsory treatment) this would apply to him. I have just looked up the latest guidelines and while I didn't hear the evidence, they seem to suggest about 12 months as a tariff, so it could go either way for him.
The guideline is here at page 116.