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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
'New police powers to protect communities from disruption caused by protests'
Police forces will be granted new powers to put conditions on repeat protests as the Home Secretary orders a fresh look at how protests are policed and organised. The new powers, which will be brought forward as soon as possible, will allow senior officers to consider the ‘cumulative impact’ of previous protest activity. If a protest has taken place at the same site for weeks on end, and caused repeated disorder, the police will have the authority to, for example, instruct organisers to hold the event somewhere else. Anyone who breaches the conditions will risk arrest and prosecution. The Home Secretary will also review existing legislation to ensure that powers are sufficient and being consistently applied. This will include powers to ban protests outright, and will also include provisions in the Crime and Policing Bill, which is currently going through Parliament.
The government will make the improvements by amending sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act 1986 to explicitly allow the police to take account of the cumulative impact of frequent protests on local areas in order to impose conditions on public processions and assemblies. Further details will be set out in due course...
'Hate crime rises in England and Wales with religiously-motivated offences at record level'
Religious hate crime recorded by police in England and Wales has reached a record high, new figures have shown. There were 7,164 such offences recorded by forces across the two nations - excluding the Metropolitan Police - in the year to March, a rise of 3% from 6,973 in the previous 12 months. This is the highest annual total of these offences recorded, the Home Office said.
Not including the Met Police, hate crimes targeted at Muslims rose by almost a fifth from 2,690 to 3,199, with the Home Office noting a "clear spike" in these offences in August 2024, which coincides with the Southport murders and riots that followed last summer. While there was a drop by 18% in the number of religious hate crimes targeted at Jewish people, the department cautioned that the overall figures exclude those recorded by the UK's largest police force, the Met Police, because of a change in their crime recording system. The Home Office said the Met recorded 40% of all religious hate crimes targeted at Jewish people in the last year. There were 137,550 hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales, including the Met, but the change in recording means this is not directly comparable year-on-year. Overall, excluding the Met, there were 115,990 hate crime offences recorded by police across the two nations in the year ending March 2025. This is an increase of 2% from 113,166 for the previous 12 months...
'Crown Prosecution Service's chief inspector to probe miscarriage of justice body'
The chair of the Criminal Cases Review Commission has decided to have the miscarriage of justice body’s work thoroughly checked – asking the chief inspector for the Crown Prosecution Service to conduct an in-depth probe. Dame Vera Baird KC said it was important that Westminster, the public, applicants and potential applications have confidence in the CCRC’s work and the assurance of an inspection would ‘prove that point’ or flag improvements that need to be made.
Baird acknowledged shortly after her appointment in June that confidence in the CCRC had been ‘badly damaged’ after the organisation came under fire for its handling of the Andrew Malkinson miscarriage of justice. Helen Pitcher quit as chair in January, telling the lord chancellor she was ‘scapegoated’ over the handling of the Malkinson case. A few months later, barrister Karen Kneller resigned as chief executive after MPs said her position had become ‘untenable’...
'Spy case collapse blamed on failure to label China a threat'
A case involving two men accused of spying for China collapsed because evidence could not be obtained from the government referring to China as a national security threat, the UK's most senior prosecutor has said. Charges against Christopher Cash, 30, and Christopher Berry, 33 - who both deny the allegations - were dropped by prosecutors last month prompting criticism from ministers and MPs.
In a rare intervention, the director of public prosecutions (DPP) Stephen Parkinson said the Crown Prosecution Service tried to obtain further evidence from the government "over many months" but witness statements did not meet the threshold to prosecute. Sir Keir Starmer said the government could only draw on the previous government's assessment, which dubbed China an "epoch-defining challenge". Mr Parkinson said while there was sufficient evidence to prosecute at the time charges were brought in April 2024, a precedent set by another spying case earlier this year had then raised the threshold needed to convict people under the Official Secrets Act. China would have needed to have been labelled a "threat to national security" at the time of the alleged offences by Mr Cash and Mr Berry, he said. The government has always maintained it is "frustrated" the trial collapsed and Mr Parkinson's intervention comes after weeks of speculation about why the prosecution could not continue. Sir Keir said the government's description of China could not change retrospectively and had to be based on the position of the last government...
'Robert Jenrick announces plans to abolish Sentencing Council amid 'two-tier justice' row'
The Conservatives have announced they will abolish the independent body that advises courts on sentences in a bid to stop what it has called "two-tier justice". Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick said that ministers, rather than the Sentencing Council, would be responsible for setting sentencing policy if the Tories return to power at the next election.
Mr Jenrick, who previously served as immigration minister, also promised to sack any judges who engage in "political activism".Under his plans, the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office watchdog will get "new powers to investigate inappropriate conduct, and remove any judge who engages in political activism".
The shadow justice secretary has also pledged to abolish the Judicial Appointments Commission and instead give the power to appoint judges to the justice secretary of the day - a move that is likely to be seen as threatening the independence of the judiciary...
Cases
R v Peppiatt [2025] EWCA Crim 110
... The final ground of appeal is expressed as, "The learned judge erred by not providing to the parties a copy of all of the jury notes submitted for matters to be addressed." This submission has been modified in oral argument, but as it was placed before us in writing we need to address it. In this trial there was a note from the jury that led to the judge giving the majority direction. Counsel were not shown the note as it was described as a "numbers note". We will adopt the same expression.
We have seen all the notes. In his written grounds of appeal Mr George KC accepts the judge followed a long-standing practice by indicating the broad effect of the note without sharing it. But, argues Mr George, that procedure is outdated and illogical, not least as when, as in this case, the jury convict after a majority direction they are asked to reveal whether they have done so unanimously or by a majority, and if the latter, by what majority. Numbers, it is submitted, are thereby revealed. So there can be no logical reason, it is argued, not to disclose them when they are set out in notes from the jury. The closest this Court gets to any legal analysis of the rules governing how such numbers notes are dealt with is a paragraph in the grounds of appeal that asserts: "The perception created in such circumstances ... fail the Article 6 Human Rights Act and common law/open justice and due process fairness tests"...
Drawing together the threads of these various sources:
(1) There is an obvious reason for keeping the deliberation of juries confidential; it allows jurors, who may on occasions be dealing with very serious cases and on occasions even with dangerous individuals, to argue and express their views in private without the fear that their opinions and personal decisions will be known to the outside world...
(5) Section 20D makes it illegal, amongst other things, to disclose "votes cast by members of the jury in the course of their deliberations". It must follow that, flatly contrary to the applicant's written submissions in this case, the legislature's intention is that at least at times such voting numbers are kept confidential...
(6) The exceptions of section 20E are consistent with allowing the overarching rule to be impinged upon to allow a jury to confirm the numbers after a post-majority-direction guilty verdict, hence the exception of in "connection with the delivery of that verdict" in section 20E (1)...
(7) Similarly, the current practice of the jury being able to tell the judge the state of their deliberations is catered for by the exception, in the same subsection of "enabling the jury to arrive at their verdict"...
Other
'Dishonest barrister disbarred after lying to court in order to appear in second trial'
A barrister granted compassionate leeway by a judge on the grounds she was looking after her sick mother was in fact appearing in a separate simultaneous murder trial, a bar tribunal found today. Saleema Mahmood, called in November 1999, was disbarred after admitting to professional misconduct. Mahmood was alleged to have failed to act with integrity in that, while acting in a criminal trial at Nottingham Crown Court, she obtained permission to attend via CVP because of the ill health of her mother. However she failed to inform the judge or other counsel in the Nottingham trial that she was appearing in person that day in a murder trial at Stafford Crown court. Mahmood was alleged to have improperly taken advantage of the permission given to attend the Nottingham trial remotely to attend the Stafford trial in person, of concealing her participation in the Stafford trial from the court in Nottingham and by absenting herself from each case failing to act in the best interests of her clients. Mahmood initially denied the charges against her, but this morning, on the third day of her disciplinary hearing, she admitted the charges in full.