The Defence Brief

His Majesty King Harry: the goal of Colborne's plans Background News emerged from the Old Bailey this morning that Mark Colborne, a 37-year-old white man, has been convicted of an offence under the Terrorism Act 2006. The prosecution said that Colborne had planned to shoot Princes Charles and William so that Prince Harry would accede to the throne (apparently he is unaware of Prince George’s claim).  The reason he wanted to Harry to become king is that he felt marginalised by society following bullying as a child for having ginger hair. The prosecution alleged that he had written down plans for the assassinations – although owned no weapons capable of fulfilling his plans – and had been stockpiling chemicals that could be used to produce cyanide.  I assume that he also made plans for a cyanide attack; however, the newspaper reports I’ve seen do not make that clear.  In addition to the notes and chemicals there was evidence that Colborne had been searchin...

The EU flag: like a ref flag to a bull New Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has suggested he would consider re-nationalising the railways.  In response, UKIP leader Nigel Farage stated that this was impossible due to EU Directive 2012/34/EU, which he says requires railways in member states to be in private ownership. EU law is not my area of expertise; however, I have done my best to research this topic and from what I have found I must disagree with Mr Farage. First, Directive 2012/34/EU does say in the preamble: "In order to render railway transport efficient and competitive with other modes of transport, Member States should ensure that railway undertakings have the status of independent operators behaving in a commercial manner and adapting to market needs." However, when you read through the directive (which is very long and very tediously drafted) it does not actually appear to require the railway to be in private ownership.  At most, the directive req...

Reporting on the CJS is often ill-informed On the 17 th September 2015, the Daily Mail published a story entitled, “Judge rules it is right that child molester who abused ethnic minority girls got longer sentence because Asian sex crime victims suffer more than whites” .  Many people have commented on this story in the past few days including one barrister who said on Twitter , “HHJ Cahill and CA said Asian Children suffer more than white children of [sic] sexually abused.  Let that sink in for a second and then scream” Now, if any court said that it would be an outrage but neither HHJ Cahill in the Crown Court nor their Lordships in the Court of Appeal said anything of the sort.  Giving judgment of the Court of Appeal, Mr Justice Walker said, “The remaining point taken by Mr Shafi [advocate for the appellant] is that the judge had, he submitted, regarded the offending as aggravated because of the victims’ ethnic and religious origin. This point is, with...

  If you're thin you're not coming in - classy One of the things that annoys me the most is politicians who think that the criminal law is a way to solve all of society’s ills.  Quite often I’m annoyed that politicians are claiming that the thing they are discussing is one of society’s ills but that’s a different story. The thing that is annoying me today is the French and Caroline Noakes MP, she heads the All Parliamentary Group on Body Image, which sounds at once both a very specific topic and yet one with a very wide reach.  The French have created a criminal offence of using a thin model in a fashion show and Ms Noakes wants to introduce the same crime here. In France those caught breaking the law face up to six-months imprisonment – the reports I’ve read are unclear whether that means prison for the organiser, the model booker or the model herself.  Who knows, maybe if we’re going to be really tough on crimes like this we should be imprisoning a...

Royal Courts of Justice - hopefully they all know the law here Motoring law is a niche area of criminal law that not every criminal solicitor or barrister properly understands.  It’s no great surprise.  I wouldn’t want to get involved in a serious fraud case because, although I’m an experienced criminal solicitor who has conducted minor fraud trials in the distant past, I do not have the expertise to properly represent somebody facing trial in a major fraud case. Motoring law, and the drink driving offences I mostly handle, is every bit as complex as any other area of law and can be a minefield for the solicitor who doesn’t fully understand it.  That applies every bit as much to courts as it does to defence or prosecution solicitors. Recently, I was representing a client who I knew had a previous conviction for failing to provide a specimen of breath at the roadside.  So, I wasn’t surprised to see that on his list of previous convictions, what did surp...

Which one is the Des? I am regularly asked… well often… sometimes?  Okay, okay… I’ve been asked two or three times whether I think that they drink driving limit should be lowered to match the Scottish limit or even dropped to zero. Obviously as I am a solicitor who represents an awful lot of drink drivers through London Drink Driving Solicitor and Oxford DrinkDriving Solicitor , everybody assumes that I have a vested interest in keeping the limit where it is and making sentences less onerous on drink drivers – presumably because they see me as the drink driver’s friend.  I am sure that this is the reason they ask me: everybody knows drink drivers are evil (link to blog) so when they meet me they assume they can start a debate (or maybe have an excuse to shout at me).  Let’s get one thing out of the way: I don’t feel like I have a vested interest in where the drink driving limit is set!  Murder, rape and drugs are illegal and people are in court for all ...