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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
'First ever CPS deferred prosecution agreement for £615 million'
The Crown Prosecution Service has entered into a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) today (Tuesday 5 December 2023) with Entain plc, a global online sports betting and gaming business (owner of Ladbrokes and Coral bookmakers) headquartered in London, to settle the HM Revenue & Customs investigation into the Company (and its group). This agreement was approved by Dame Victoria Sharp DBE, President of the King’s Bench Division, at the Royal Courts of Justice, sitting as the Crown Court at Southwark.
The conduct which is the subject of this DPA relates to the alleged failure by GVC to prevent bribery contrary to Section 7 of the Bribery Act 2010 between July 2011 and December 2017. The alleged bribery offences occurred primarily in Turkey. GVC disposed of its Turkish business in December 2017. Entain plc has agreed to pay a financial penalty plus disgorgement of profits totalling £585 million, to make a charitable donation of £20 million and to pay a contribution of £10 million to the CPS and HMRC costs...
'Judiciary blamed for upsurge of bullying at bar'
The bar is reporting a fresh surge of concern about bullying, harassment and discrimination - with most of the reports identifying members of the judiciary as culprits. A survey by the Bar Council found 44 per cent had experienced or observed this behaviour while working either in person or online, an increase from 38 per cent in 2021 and 31 per cent in 2017. Of the 1233 barristers who reported experiencing or observing bullying and/or harassment, the majority (53 per cent) reported a member of the judiciary as the person responsible, up from 45 per cent in 2021. Barristers working in criminal and family practice were more likely than average to have experienced bullying or harassment (43 per cent and 37 per cent respectively), while more than half of female barristers from ethnic minority backgrounds reported experiencing bullying or harassment...
Bar chair Nick Vineall KC said: ‘The bar should not tolerate any bullying, harassment or discriminatory behaviour. Wellbeing, retention and progression of barristers are all affected by the way we are treated by colleagues and the Bar Council is committed to addressing the problems highlighted by the data.’
'Preferred candidate for the role of His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Probation'
His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Probation (HMCIP) is the independent inspector of probation and youth offending services in England and Wales. The Inspectorate offers independent scrutiny of the quality of work undertaken with individual offenders to seek to improve outcomes for individuals and communities. Martin Jones has been selected as the preferred candidate for the role of HMCIP following a rigorous assessment process conducted in accordance with the Governance Code on Public Appointments.
The role is subject to pre-appointment hearing by the Justice Select Committee. Pre-appointment scrutiny is an important part of the appointment process for some of the most significant public appointments made by Ministers. It is designed to provide an added level of scrutiny to the appointment process. Pre-appointment hearings are held in public and allow a Select Committee to take evidence before a candidate is appointed. Ministers consider the Committee’s views before deciding whether to proceed with the appointment...
'Meta begins rolling out end-to-end encryption across Messenger and Facebook'
Facebook’s parent company has begun rolling out end-to-end encryption across Messenger and Facebook, Meta announced on Thursday. The company’s vice-president for Messenger, Loredana Crisan, said the encryption was built on the Signal protocol and Meta’s own Labyrinth protocol... Under the changes, Meta will no longer have access to the contents of what users send or receive, unless one user in a chat chooses to report a message to the company. The new features will be available immediately but the company said it would take some time for Messenger chats to be updated with default end-to-end encryption.It will take months for end-to-end encryption to be rolled out to the more than 1 billion users on the platform. Users will receive a prompt to set up a recovery method to restore their messages once the transition is completed.
The move is likely to raise concern among law enforcement and child protection groups, which have argued against companies implementing end-to-end encryption. The former UK home secretary, Suella Braverman, in September urged Meta not to go ahead with the plan...
'IWF ‘outraged’ at Meta decision to prioritise privacy of paedophiles over children’s safety'
The Internet Watch Foundation is “outraged” at Meta’s “catastrophic” decision to roll out end-to-end encryption, which will allow illegal and harmful content to spread undetected on its platforms. Today (December 7), Meta announced it is beginning to roll out end-to-end encryption on its platforms, beginning with Facebook Messenger...
End-to-end encryption will mean Meta’s current apparatus for detecting known child sexual abuse imagery will be rendered useless, meaning the company will be unable to spot criminal material being spread through its channels. Introducing this technology without first putting in place a solution to prevent this abuse is, in effect, providing a safe space for criminals to spread abuse imagery with impunity...
Cases
R v Drake [2023] EWCA Crim 1454
On 31st May 2022 Jaden Drake, (then aged 24) and Igors Andersons, (then aged 19), were convicted of murder following a trial by a jury before His Honour Judge Morgan, sitting with a jury in the Crown Court at Chelmsford...
At the end of all the evidence the judge heard argument on whether the defence of loss of control should be left to the jury. He gave an ex tempore ruling at the end of the submissions. He later handed down a written ruling. In his oral ruling he set out the three stage test required by the statute. In dealing with the first part of that test, ‘was there sufficient evidence to leave the matter to the jury?’, the judge found that the material said to support the defence of loss of control came from Jaden Drake, when he said that Igors Andersons looked emotional and as though he was going to cry, and further, that he looked as though he did not know what he was doing. The judge went on the say that what was important was the evidence of Igors Andersons himself. He set out Igors Andersons’ account of being jabbed in the legs and of being frightened. He went on to deal with his evidence of picking up the knife, not with the intention of using it but to prevent Christian Patru from using it again. He described Igors Andersons’ account of a struggle between the two men and the stabbing, which the judge characterised as being said to be in self-defence. He found that the evidence of Igors Andersons was not sufficient to meet the first part of the test. He said it was important to consider the evidence of a defendant himself as to his intention at the time and whether, as a result of what has happened, they have lost their self-control. He reached the conclusion that, “(t)hat is evidence absent in this case from the defendant himself”. He found that it did not raise a sufficient case and that it was not assisted by the evidence of Jaden Drake...
Accepting all the defence evidence at its highest, including the character evidence, it does not amount to any sufficient evidence upon which the jury should have been asked to consider a loss of control. The picking up of the knife was a deliberate and rational act. The struggle that followed, on the accused’s account, meant that he was acting to defend himself. The fact that he could not remember how the blows were struck or that he used the expressions ‘woke up’ or ‘became conscious’ do not meet the test of sufficiency. Jaden Drake’s description does not strengthen the position. That Igors Andersons looked scared and about to cry adds no weight. Nor does the description that he looked as though he did not know what he was doing. His case that he acted instinctively, in the heat of the moment to protect himself never reached the level of sufficiently showing that he lost control of himself to the standard now required by the statutory test. The judge was correct to reject the submission that he should leave the issue to the jury...