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
Party Manifestos: Criminal Justice
Labour Party
- Extra 13,000 constables and PCSOS
- Crackdown on antisocial behaviour
- Halve knife crime in a decade
- New criminal exploitation of children offence
- Fast-track rape cases with specialist courts
Conservative Party
- 8,000 new police funded by hiking visa costs
- Hotspot policing for every force to cut anti-social behaviour
- 25-year prison term for domestic murders (apart from those who kill their domestic abusers)
- Homicide sentencing review to stop killers getting off lightly
Liberal Democrat
- Police "visible, trusted and focused on preventing and solving crimes"
- All burglaries to be attended by police "and properly investigated"
- Halve time from offence to sentencing to tackle court backlog
- End prison overcrowding; improve rehabilitation of prison leavers
- New laws to crack down on puppy and kitten smuggling
Green Party
- Scrap law limiting protests
- Scrap Prevent terrorist prevention programme
- £2.5bn for court system
Plaid Cymru
- Want transfer of justice powers to Wales
- Create a domestic abuse register
- Increase sentences for domestic violence/stalking
- Drug consumption rooms
- Decriminalise "soft drugs"
- Scrub criminal records of drugs possession criminals
'Judges rush to delete job titles from online profiles'
It’s been a tough fortnight for the judiciary as judges sitting on domestic and overseas courts face criticism in a way that would have been unheard of a generation ago. At home, judges at all levels are scrambling to amend their social media profiles to erase any reference to the fact that they are … judges. The flurry of digital deleting was triggered on Tuesday as the lady chief justice and lord chancellor beefed up an initial low-grade reprimand dished out to the deputy chief magistrate. Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill, the most senior judge in England and Wales, and Alex Chalk KC, ruled that Tan Ikram — whose modern official title is deputy senior district judge — should be given a “formal warning for misconduct” over his social media activity...
Many experienced social media surfers will have sympathy for Ikram. Scrolling through the morass of social media on a smartphone can occasionally result in an accidental like or two. But Carr and Chalk used the Ikram case to restate that judges must remove any reference to their roles from their social media profiles. Ikram had identified himself as a senior judge on LinkedIn. That diktat will affect dozens of judges at all levels of the bench as a cursory glance at LinkedIn alone reveals that they continue to refer to their titles on their profiles. Included in that group are several senior judges...
'Harriet Harman KC to lead independent review of bullying and harassment at the Bar'
The Bar Council has appointed the Rt Hon Harriet Harman KC to chair the independent review of bullying and harassment, including sexual harassment, at the Bar. The independent review was commissioned by the Bar Council following its report into experiences of bullying and harassment which found that 44% of respondents had experienced or witnessed bullying, harassment or discrimination in the previous two years – an increase on the previous survey results. The report found these inappropriate behaviours were a widespread problem which , in part are a consequence of the culture at the Bar and the external pressures on the justice system. In response to the findings, the Bar Council Chair committed to addressing the problem through an independent review.
The review will seek to identify the reasons for the unacceptable levels of bullying and harassment, including sexual harassment, at the Bar. It will consider the impact of these behaviours, the efficacy of current measures to counter this problem, reporting mechanisms, support services, and, most importantly, it will identify solutions...
'Judges failed postmasters, former DPP tells bar conference'
Judges failed postmasters who were wrongly convicted in at least a dozen cases in the country’s biggest miscarriage of justice, a former director of public prosecutions has said. Sir David Calvert-Smith, DPP from 1998 to 2003 and a retired High Court judge, was instructed by the Post Office to lead a review in 2020 of over 900 prosecutions of postmasters by the Post Office. Chairing a panel at the Bar Council’s conference in London on Saturday, on reforming private prosecutions in the wake of the scandal, he was asked if he thought that some judges had let down the sub-postmasters. Calvert-Smith replied: ‘Yes, I think that is certainly true in probably about a dozen of the cases I read, when I went through them – maybe more.’ He told the conference: ‘Surely a judge would have poked a bit more deeply into this rather than thinking “I’ve got a full list, I want to get on with the next case”.’
In February, the lady chief justice, Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill, rejected any suggestion that judges had been at fault. At her first press conference after being appointed she said: ‘I don’t accept that there is any basis for implicating the judiciary in any of these wrongful convictions, so far as I can see.’ She stressed that juries, not judges, decide guilt and, in cases were postmasters, represented by lawyers, pleaded guilty, it was ‘not for the judges to go behind that plea’. However barrister Flora Page, of 23 ES chambers who represented three postmasters in the Court of Appeal and is currently acting for more in the Post Office inquiry, told the bar conference that some judges had failed by not ordering disclosure of material that would have exposed the bugs and faults in the Horizon software...
Cases
DPP v Barton [2024] EWHC 1350 (Admin)
... In imposing a stay of the proceedings as an abuse of process, the judge held that it was impossible for Mr Barton to receive a fair trial. That was because the prosecution proposed to rely on the recorded res gestae statements of Mrs Barton without calling her to give evidence, when she was available. The judge held that this put Mr Barton at a significant disadvantage because the defence would be unable to cross-examine his wife on previous inconsistent statements. The correctness of the judge's approach and conclusion on this basis for the stay is the principal issue in this appeal...
... The starting point is that the prosecution is only obliged to call those witnesses whose statements have been served as witnesses on whom the prosecution intends to rely. The rationale for this rule is that by serving a statement on the defence as evidence (and not as unused material) the prosecution has impliedly undertaken to have that witness in court so that they may be examined. The defence do not need therefore to approach that witness for a statement, and are not taken by surprise or prejudiced by the loss of evidence of potential value to their case. There was plainly no such implicit undertaking in this case. On the contrary. Mrs Barton had never provided a witness statement and had expressed an unwillingness from the outset to give evidence against her husband. She had further reinforced this unwillingness by writing the Letter many months later in which she expressly retracted the initial allegations (recorded on body worn video footage) upon which the prosecution relied. Nor is the prosecution obliged to call a witness where it is anticipated, with good reason, that their evidence will be untruthful. The position is different where the witness's evidence is capable of belief; in that case, it is the prosecutor's duty to call the witness even though their evidence may be inconsistent with the case the prosecution seeks to prove: see R v Oliva [1965] 1 WLR 1028 at page 1035H. The prosecution has a wide discretion however in deciding whether or not a witness is capable of belief (and we note that there is no suggestion in the Case or indeed by Mr Csoka that it was not permissible for the prosecution to form its view in respect of Mrs Barton)...
... In the sensitive and specific context of domestic abuse, the position, in our opinion, is very different to that advocated for by Mr Csoka. It is that it will often not be unfair to allow the prosecution to adduce the res gestae evidence of a complainant where they are not called as a witness, and there is an absence of fear. As is now well understood, it is not uncommon in such cases for there to be sufficient evidence to prosecute the alleged perpetrator of the abuse even where the complainant does not to support the prosecution. In our opinion, in such cases, the public interest may often demand the use of res gestae evidence, particularly recorded evidence, regardless of the cooperation of the complainant...
Other
'Courts in crisis: The struggle for justice in one English town'
The backlog of Crown Court cases in England and Wales is close to a record high - more than a quarter have now been open for over a year. In West Mercia, which covers a large part of the West Midlands and the counties bordering Wales, on average nearly 18 months pass between an incident occurring and a jury reaching a verdict. But many people have been waiting a lot longer for justice.
Silkin Way is a 14-mile walking route that snakes its way through much of Telford. On 25 January 2018, there was an altercation on the path between four males, and a few days later three teenagers were charged with grievous bodily harm. Telford magistrates sent the case to be heard at Shrewsbury Crown Court, because of its seriousness, and a trial was fixed for September 2019. A problem at the court meant it had to be rescheduled for November 2020, but again the court couldn’t fit the case in. An effort to hear the case in February 2022 also failed. A new trial was then set for November 2022. Further problems with court availability, however, meant the case was once more delayed, until last month, April 2024. Then on the day the six-day trial was due to begin, the court removed it from its listings, as an existing trial had overrun - Shrewsbury didn’t have the capacity for both trials to take place simultaneously. A new trial has now been set for January 2025, seven years after the incident on Silkin Way...