The Defence Brief

Beyond posting pictures of my kids for my family to see, I don’t spend much time on Facebook, but today I made an exception when I saw somebody claiming that the Queen is “worth £57bn” and criticising her for taking £360M of tax payers money to fix up Buckingham Palace. I couldn’t resist pointing out that she doesn’t own Buck House so she wouldn’t be paying for the repairs and, more importantly, she isn’t worth anything close to £57bn. According to the Sunday Times Rich List her wealth is around £360M. This led to a discussion on various aspects of law between me (Post Graduate Diploma in Law, Called to the Bar and admitted to the Roll of Solicitors) and a man who claims a MSc(Hons) in General Knowledge – I don’t know if that’s a real qualification or not but it sounds made up. The discussion moved across property law and the law of trusts. It ended when I made the comment that my interlocutor clearly lacks basic knowledge of the law of trusts and equitable obligations. He p...

Does electing judges work in the USA? Last week the Divisional Court gave judgment in the case of R (Miller) -V- Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union , otherwise known as the Brexit Case. The decision of the court was that the law requires Parliament to trigger the notification of the UK’s intention to leave the EU using Article 50. Obviously, those who campaigned on the basis that we should leave the EU to hand sovereignty back to the UK Parliament are most upset about the decision of the court that it is for the UK Parliament to make important decisions like this one. Many of the same people who are super keen on Brexit and who either don’t understand or choose to ignore what the case was about and what the court said have been up in arms about it calling for changes to how judges are appointed. In particular Daniel Hannan, Conservative MEP, who confusingly seemed to call for elected judges but then told me on Twitter he was in favour of “open confirmation h...

Although most my work is in drink driving offences , I do also handle a lot of dangerous and careless driving offences too – although I don’t advertise this service, dangerous driving and drink driving can often go hand in hand. With that in mind, I’ve been fascinated by the case of James Ellerton, the Liverpool police officer who deliberately crashed a police van into a motorcyclist. PC Ellerton was investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission who referred the case to the Crown Prosecution Service for a decision on whether to charge PC Ellerton with dangerous driving. He was charged and subsequently tried at Liverpool Crown Court where a jury acquitted him despite the Crown alleging that his actions were excessive and in breach of police policy. I should admit that my first reaction was that his actions must be sufficient for a conviction of dangerous driving but clearly the jury disagreed and having considered the press reports I have changed my opinion...

Tomasz Kroker using his mobile phone at the wheel This week saw Tomasz Kroker sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment for causing death by dangerous driving along with the calls for tougher sentences that usually accompany such distressing cases. Kroker had been driving his HGV along the A34 in Oxfordshire when it collided with a row of stationary vehicles that had stopped due to traffic ahead of them. Initially Kroker told him employer he had not been distracted by the radio or his telephone. In police interview, he answered no comment to all questions put to him at first. At some point, he told police that his brakes had failed suddenly. When the police showed him the dashcam footage from his lorry that showed him using his phone up until the very last second before impact Kroker admitted being distracted. Last week he entered a guilty plea to four counts of causing death by dangerous driving and one count of causing serious injury by dangerous driving. This week judge Mau...

A justice system Kafka would recognise When I read The Trial by Kafka and Nineteen Eighty-Four by Orwell, I took them as warnings of how a bad justice system wrecks lives of those caught up in it. Sadly, some Members of Parliament and the House of Lords seem to view the books more as a guide to how they would like our Criminal Justice System to run. Today, I read of plans to hide the names of accusers and witnesses from defendants in a large number of cases. Victims of sexual offences, such as rape, have had the right to lifelong anonymity for many years now. This means that it is a criminal offence to publish information that will lead to a complainant being identified. A Bill currently being considered by Parliament would extend that anonymity to bar defendants and their lawyers knowing the name of the person accusing them. This would apply not only in sexual offences, as has been reported in the press, but also in violent offences. The anonymity currently offered to ...

This is not how it happens in England and Wales Following the Ched Evans verdict, you can read my analysis of the case here , the hysteria continues completely unabated by anything so unhelpful as facts and reality - please read the post above that was taken from Twitter. Today, I read outrage on Twitter at how women jurors are abused by the courts who require them to answer person questions about being assaulted by men in open court prior to being allowed to sit on a jury. As I said in my post on the Ched Evans case, it is this sort of uninformed nonsense that will put people off reporting crimes not the reality, because the reality is that this sort of thing simply does not happen in the UK, despite claims by some on Twitter. Blame the judges Let’s look at the claim quickly. First, we see it’s posted by somebody called “Shawna Gore” – sounds like an American name to me and sure enough a very quick search on Facebook reveals that this person works in Miami....

Ched Evans Before I begin, I will say that at around 4,500 words this is probably the longest blog I’ve ever posted but I think it’s all necessary to set the scene for this case and explain the background that has been largely ignored or airbrushed in the press. Despite its length, I have not attempted to include every little detail of either fact or law but have done my best to provide a balanced picture of the Ched Evans case, what happened and why the courts reached the decisions they did. There has been so much written about the Ched Evans case over the past weekend, much of it based on a very shaky grasp of the facts and law, that I decided I would read up about the case and weigh in (hopefully on a slightly firmer footing than most of the articles I’ve read so far). Broadly speaking there seem to be three groups who have opinions on the case: 1.        Sexual violence groups (including people describing themselves as “radical feminists”...