About
A free weekly collection of criminal law links - for practitioners, law students, and anyone with an interest in the criminal justice system of England and Wales.
Curated by Sam Willis, a barrister at 5 King's Bench Walk.
News
'Battle to water down jury trial reforms continues'
The government has continued to bat away proposed amendments to the Courts and Tribunals Bill that would have watered down its plans to curb jury trials as part of wider efforts to cut the Crown court backlog. However, an important amendment on specialist rape courts - a Labour manifesto commitment – will now be voted on next week. The public bill committee met twice this week to scrutinise the legislation and debate various amendments tabled by MPs opposing the proposed restrictions on jury trials. So far, the government has retained the first two clauses of the bill, which remove the rights to elect a jury trial and to object to a venue, after nine committee members voted in favour of retaining them as currently drafted. Six voted against...
Only two more days of line-by-line legislative scrutiny in the Commons remains - next Tuesday and Thursday. If the government defeats all the amendments, MPs who abstained from voting during the bill's second reading could decide to vote against the bill when it returns to the Commons chamber for its third reading. The bill passed the second reading by 304 votes to 203. No votes were recorded for 88 Labour MPs. The government could also struggle to get its jury reforms through the Lords. While the Parliament Act provides for the will of the elected chamber to prevail, peers could rely on the convention that this does not apply to non-manifesto measures...
'AI court transcripts to boost access to justice for victims'
A new study will pave the way for victims to benefit from greater transparency and improved access to justice by exploring how artificial intelligence (AI) can provide court transcripts faster and at lower cost, as part of efforts to modernise the justice system. New research, led by HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS), will explore how AI can be used to transcribe court hearings and open the door to faster, cheaper access to court records for victims and others who need them. Costly court transcript fees have meant that victims have had to fork out hundreds – and in some cases thousands of pounds – to access exactly what was said in court to help provide answers and closure. The findings have the potential to significantly reduce these fees and mark another step towards greater transparency - breaking down barriers and making criminal court transcripts far easier to obtain for those who need them most...
Currently, transcripts of Crown Court proceedings are produced by contracted providers. The new study will explore how the Ministry of Justice’s in-house AI, Justice Transcribe, could meet required accuracy standards while reducing transcription time and costs. The findings will inform nationwide plans to upgrade, modernise and open up the court system and increase access to justice in the digital age. The government recently announced that victims whose cases are going through the Crown Court will have access to free transcripts of judges’ sentencing remarks, upon request, from Spring 2027, as part of a major boost to deliver swifter access to justice...
'Faster and fairer justice for victims thanks to major magistrate recruitment drive'
A new national taskforce will oversee local recruitment committees across England and Wales – helping select, interview and recruit civil-minded members of the public to deliver justice in communities across the country. And for the first time, recruitment of magistrates will happen throughout the calendar year with a recruitment drive every quarter standardising a process that varies from region to region.
Together, the changes will mean that, from today, people applying to be a magistrate will be recruited and trained up in at least half the time – a process that can currently take more than a year. The move will also turbocharge the number of successful new magistrates to 21,000 by March 2029 – a whopping six thousand more than currently in post...
'Digital overhaul of prison system to drive down release errors'
Updating Parliament today (15 April), Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy pledged to cut release mistakes to as close to zero as possible – backed by up to £82 million – tackling the rise in errors which began under the last government as prisons were pushed to the brink of collapse, and restoring public confidence. This is the latest part of the government’s work to rebuild our broken justice system, fix the foundations and restore public confidence.
Central to the reforms will be the creation of a new Justice ID system - a single digital identity for every person who enters the prison system, tracking individuals seamlessly from arrest, through the courts, into custody and back into the community. This will replace the shockingly outdated system where offenders can go by multiple aliases leading to confusion, unnecessary human error and offenders being let out when they should stay behind bars. For the first time, biometric technology - such as fingerprints and facial scans - will be used on all prisoners to verify identities at key points in the system, including releases from custody. It will build on existing uses within policing, with the first phase of Justice ID rolled out this year. This will allow staff across the system to access reliable, up-to-date information on any individual, eliminating duplicated data entries and fragmented paper-based processes that have contributed to errors for years.
The new measures are in direct response to an independent review published today into releases in error by Dame Lynne Owens and commissioned by the Deputy Prime Minister. The report found that these mistakes are ‘simply one symptom of a broken system’ the Government inherited – driven to breaking point by staffing cuts, a failure to build places and chronic underinvestment in the digital infrastructure modern justice demands...
'Man guilty of 2003 rape that saw innocent Andrew Malkinson jailed'
A sex offender has been found guilty of a rape which saw an innocent man jailed for 17 years. Paul Quinn, 52, had denied the attack on a woman in Little Hulton, Salford, in 2003 for which Andrew Malkinson was wrongly convicted. Jurors at Manchester Crown Court heard the father-of-six's DNA was found on the woman's vest and he had searched online to see how long police kept samples. Quinn, of Exeter, Devon, and formerly of Little Hulton, Salford, was also found guilty of strangulation and grievous bodily harm...
Malkinson, who was working as a security guard at a local shopping centre, had protested his innocence but was wrongly picked out at as the attacker in an identity parade. He was jailed in 2004. Speaking after Quinn's conviction, Malkinson said he was "content that the right result has finally been achieved for the victim, myself and the public. But the truth is that if the police had acted as they should have done, Paul Quinn could have been caught a long time ago," he said. "Instead, they wanted a quick conviction and I was a handy patsy forced to spend over 17 years in prison for his horrific crime." Malkinson, from Grimsby, made multiple failed appeals against his conviction in 2012 and 2020... Now aged 60, he was only released in 2020 after 17 years in jail, with his conviction finally quashed by the Court of Appeal in 2023...
'Harrow Crown Court reopens after three years'
Harrow Crown Court reopened on Monday after closing almost three years ago following the discovery of potentially dangerous concrete. The building was shut in August 2023 after reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) was found. About £26m has been spent on safety and further improvement works at the court. At the time, the closure was only expected to last for between six and nine months, but the reopening was delayed several times. This forced criminal trials to be held elsewhere, adding to pressure on court backlogs which have grown to more than 19,000 in London alone.
Hundreds of cases would usually be heard at Harrow Crown Court each year, but had to instead be held at Hendon and Willesden magistrates' courts and the Crown Courts in Southwark, Wood Green and the Old Bailey. The Ministry of Justice said the reopening of Harrow Crown Court's eight courtrooms on Monday was a "key milestone" in the government's drive to modernise courts and deliver justice more quickly...
Cases
R v Benjamin Field [2026] EWCA Crim 413
... It is implicit in that approach that if the CCRC refers a case for a “second go” under section 13(2) of the 1995 Act, the court will not refuse to consider the merits of the argument simply because the previous court’s decision is binding. That is a necessary consequence of the enactment by Parliament of section 13(2) of the 1995 Act. The list of exceptions to the rule on stare decisis given by the Court of Appeal in Hayes & Palombo should perhaps be extended to include CCRC references under section 13(2)...
... We are first, therefore, required to consider whether this academic criticism is correct. In this case, this involves deciding whether the covert intention of Field that Mr Farquhar should die truly means that his act of drinking the whisky was not free, deliberate and informed. This requires some analysis of principle and of the decision in Kennedy (No 2)...
... In CACD Judgment 1 [60], cited above, the court decided that Field’s undisclosed intention that Mr Farquhar should die “changed the nature of the act” of Mr Farquhar in drinking whisky. He thought he was drinking whisky with someone who “cared for him, not someone who wished for his death”. It was in this context that the weak swimmer analogy became relevant. But there was no evidence that Mr Farquhar believed himself to be in any danger as a result of drinking whisky, something he did often, or that his decision was affected by any thoughts he may have had about what the appellant might do if he were to get into difficulties. The weak swimmer chose to swim because an accused had “promised to provide assistance if the swimmer encountered difficulties”...
... That being so, we respectfully disagree with the court in CACD Judgment 1, and consider that they were bound by Kennedy (No 2) to quash the conviction. We also respectfully disagree with their decision to refuse to certify that their decision involved a point of law of general public importance and ought to be considered by the Supreme Court, for the purposes of section 33(2) of the Criminal Appeal Act 1968. A better course, in our judgment, would have been to allow the appeal and grant such a certificate so that the prosecution could have sought a ruling from the Supreme Court on the scope of Kennedy (No 2). Since we take the view that this is what that court should have done, this is what we will now do...