The Defence Brief

A car-meet at a retail park Public Spaces Protection Orders (PSPOs) allow councils to ban all kinds of behaviour that would otherwise be lawful and, in effect, to turn that behaviour into a criminal offence.  Personally, I'm not keen on local authorities having too much power, particularly after many were found to be abusing powers under RIPA to undertake intrusive surveillance to catch relatively petty criminals. A PSPO allows councils to impose on the spot fines of £100 against people breaching the orders. Examples of current PSPOs include: A ban on motorists entering a retail park in Colchester, Essex after 6pm unless they are using shops and facilities Criminalisation of begging for money in certain areas of Poole, in Dorset A ban on the consumption of alcohol and legal highs in public spaces in the city centre by Lincoln Council Outlawing the possession of an open container of alcohol in Cambridge All of these examples have very worthy aims; the retail pa...

Joe Lawton, who committed suicide after a drink driving arrest I read today of the inquest into the death of a 17-year-old who committed suicide in August 2012 after being arrested for drink driving two-days earlier. There is a view among many that people who drink and drive are irredeemably evil and deserve nothing but the hatred of society.  My specialism is defending people accused of drink driving offences ; I used to use Twitter quite a lot and on Twitter a well-know TV doctor once made a sly dig in my direction along the lines of you have the right name for somebody who represents drink drivers .  My name, of course, is Nick Diable and Old Nick is one of the names of the Devil while Diable is the French word for Devil.  I can only presume that he was implying that drink drivers are all as evil as the Devil. The truth is that some of those accused of drink driving are not guilty at all.  While the overwhelming majority of accused people (even the ...