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
'New law to ban zombie-style knives and machetes'
Dangerous zombie-style knives and machetes will be banned under new legislation to take these weapons off our streets and keep young people safe. Under the measures, first announced by the Prime Minister last year and laid before Parliament today, it will be illegal to possess, sell, manufacture or transport these zombie-style knives and machetes. The government is urging anyone with one of these dangerous weapons to voluntarily hand it into a knife surrender bin, before the official surrender and compensation scheme is launched in the summer. This will get these knives off our streets as soon as possible, while giving people in possession an opportunity to hand them in without legal implications. The full ban will come into in force in September, after which anyone in possession of one of these knives will face time behind bars...
... Building on this record, the Criminal Justice Bill will go further by increasing the maximum sentence for the possession of banned weapons from 6 months to 2 years, while anyone caught selling knives to under-18s, including online, will also face 2 years behind bars. Police will also be given new powers to seize and destroy knives found on private premises if there are reasonable grounds to suspect the blade will be used in a serious crime. Previously, police could not seize knives found during a search on a property, even if they had suspicions of criminal use...
'Anti-drone no fly zones to combat prison smuggling'
Criminal gangs who try to fly phones, drugs and weapons into prisons using drones face finding themselves there instead under tough new restrictions coming into force today (25 January). The new law makes it an automatic offence simply to fly drones within 400 metres of prisons and young offender institutions. Previously, police could only act where there was evidence of contraband being smuggled.
Drone operators who break the rules will be fined up to £2,500 while those smuggling illicit items which drive violence and criminality in custody may face up to a decade behind bars. The crackdown comes as figures reveal that the number of drones captured or sighted within prison grounds has more than doubled between 2019 and 2021. The virtual ‘no-fly zones’ will increase the likelihood of police catching organised criminals in the act – making it easier to bring prosecutions, convictions and lengthy jail terms. These new anti-drone measures will also enhance security by preventing illegal aerial filming of prisons...
Requests to operate inside these Restricted Areas can be made by submitting the UK Civil Aviation Authority’s Airspace Regulation notification form. Exemptions, if approved, will then be issued by His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS).
'Andy Malkinson: DNA warnings made years before rape case overturned'
The body that investigates potential wrongful convictions was warned it could have missed critical DNA evidence in rape cases, a year after first rejecting Andy Malkinson's appeal. The warning came in 2013, when a review of a similar case recommended the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) look again at files for DNA leads. Mr Malkinson's rape conviction was not overturned until a decade later. His lawyers say the report is evidence he could have been exonerated earlier...
Mr Malkinson was accused of a near-fatal rape in Greater Manchester in 2003 and jailed for life the following year on now wholly discredited eyewitness evidence. The Court of Appeal quashed his conviction last July, thanks to DNA evidence discovered three years after Mr Malkinson was jailed. A major inquiry is now looking at how Greater Manchester Police, the Crown Prosecution Service and CCRC handled the case. A further internal CCRC inquiry, by a senior barrister, is expected to complete shortly. The internal CCRC document raising the fresh questions concerns its handling of the case of Victor Nealon, convicted of rape in 1997 in strikingly similar circumstances to Mr Malkinson...
'Post Office investigator says cleared sub-postmaster was guilty'
A former Post Office investigator has said he still believes a branch manager, whose conviction was overturned after his death, stole money from his Post Office. Raymond Grant told the Horizon IT inquiry on Wednesday, that he considered William Quarm to be guilty. Mr Quarm pleaded guilty in 2010 to embezzling money, to try to avoid going to prison. He died in 2012, aged 69, before his conviction was quashed...
... Counsel to the inquiry, Jason Beer KC, asked the former investigator: "When you made a witness statement, did you think that Mr Quarm continued to be guilty of the crime of embezzlement?" Mr Grant replied: "Yes I did." There were at times long pauses between questions as Mr Grant's answers came. When asked whether he still believed Mr Quarm was guilty he said: "Yes I do." The counsel to the inquiry went on: "Despite the verdict of the High Court of Judiciary in Scotland? Mr Grant said: "Yes." Asked whether that remained his view, the former investigator said: "In my mind, I still think Mr Quarm had a role to play in the loss of the money." The Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh overturned Mr Quarm's conviction last year...
'Barrister Robert Courts MP sworn in as solicitor general'
Barrister Robert Courts KC MP says he is looking forward to working with the attorney general, government lawyers and civil servants to uphold the rule of law after being sworn in as solicitor general today. Courts was appointed solicitor general last month, after Robert Jenrick MP’s resignation as immigration minister sparked a mini-reshuffle. Courts, MP for Witney and West Oxfordshire since 2016, replaced Michael Tomlinson KC MP, who moved to the Home Office as minister of state (minister for illegal migration). He said: ‘It is a great honour and privilege to be sworn-in today as solicitor general for England and Wales. The law officers have an important and unique role advising the government and I look forward to working with the attorney general, government lawyers, and the civil service upholding the rule of law at the heart of the UK constitution.’
Before becoming an MP, Courts, who studied law at the University of Sheffield, was a self-employed barrister specialising in personal injury and clinical negligence. Courts was sworn in at a ceremony attended by lord chancellor Alex Chalk KC MP and attorney general Victoria Prentis KC MP...
Cases
Sentencing Remarks in R v Calocane
... In the early hours of 13th June last year, you committed a series of atrocities in this city which ended the lives of three innocent people. You went on to attack three more; fully intending, but failing, to kill them too. Your sickening crimes both shocked the nation and wrecked the lives of your surviving victims and the families of them all...
... I am entirely satisfied on the evidence, in the particular circumstances of this case and for the reasons I have given, the proper sentence is a hospital order subject to a section 41 restriction order...
R v Casserly [2024] EWCA Crim 25
On 16 May 2022, in the Crown Court at Chester, the appellant, Thomas Casserly, was convicted after trial of a single count of "sending an indecent or grossly offensive electronic communication with intent to cause distress or anxiety contrary to s 1(1)(b) of the Malicious Communications Act 1988"... The appellant maintained that his communication was a legitimate expression of his opinion; he was entitled to express his concerns in accordance with Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights (Article 10) (the Convention)...
A series of cases involving the criminal law and speech or behaviour that is (or is claimed to be) politically motivated has led to the identification of three broad categories of case: (i) those in which, on a proper analysis, the applicable criminal law does not interfere with fundamental rights at all, so that there is no need for any proportionality assessment; (ii) those in which the criminal law does or may interfere with such rights but proof of the ingredients of the offence will, without more, be sufficient to render a conviction proportionate; (iii) those in which the law does or may interfere with fundamental rights but the ingredients of the offence do not of themselves meet the proportionality requirement, so that the court is required to address it: see Abortion Services at [52] to [61]...
The present case clearly does not fall into the first category. Nor in our judgment does it fall into the second, and the judge was wrong to proceed on the basis that (or as if) it did. The meaning of "grossly offensive" is not defined in s 1 (either generally or specifically in circumstances where the right to freedom of speech is engaged). Rather, the case was one in which it was necessary to interpret and apply the statute in such a way as to ensure that the proportionality requirement was met. What could be achieved on the facts here, and what was required, was a Convention-compliant interpretation and application of the language of s 1 to the facts of the case...
The jury should have been directed that the law protects freedom of speech because it is part of living in a free and democratic society. Whether a communication is so grossly offensive that it amounts to a criminal offence and loses the protection of freedom of speech, depends on its content, the context in which it was sent and the purpose(s) of the sender... As will be apparent, we consider that the directions that were in fact given to the jury fell materially short of what was required. The judge did identify for the jury the nature of the appellant's case but that was not enough. What was necessary was a judicial direction on the matters set out above...
Education
'Majority verdicts in England and Wales brought in partly for racial and class reasons'
The introduction of majority verdicts in criminal trials in England and Wales was partly motivated by a desire to dilute the influence of minority ethnic people and the labouring classes serving on juries, according to research. The study, by the miscarriage of justice charity Appeal, said that while the widely accepted narrative for allowing majority verdicts – introduced by parliament in 1967 – as opposed to unanimous verdicts, was that it would prevent jury “nobbling” (corruption), there was another reason that was more disreputable.
Delving into government files and other archival materials, the authors of the report, published in the journal Race & Class, found little evidence that “nobbling” was widespread, but that “an increase in eligible jurors from different racial and class backgrounds led to a perceived decline in the ‘calibre’ of jurors – reflective of wider public anxieties about Commonwealth immigration, Black Power and white disenfranchisement”. The report, Majority Jury Verdicts in England and Wales: A Vestige of White Supremacy?, draws parallels with the 2020 landmark case in the US, Ramos v Louisiana, that outlawed majority verdicts for serious crimes amid recognition of their racist origins, including evidence that they were introduced in Louisiana in 1898 to suppress the votes of black jurors following the abolition of slavery. In the US, where Oregon was the only other state that allowed majority verdicts at the time of the supreme court ruling, it is argued that majority verdicts remove a safeguard against wrongful convictions, the authors said. By contrast, in the UK, it has been argued that majority verdicts could safeguard against juror bias by preventing one or two prejudiced jurors from dictating decision-making...
Other
'how Britain’s most corrupt cop ruined countless lives'
How many people did DS Derek Ridgewell fit up? The sheer scale of his depravity, and his targeting of men of colour, is only now becoming clear...