This week, MPs will vote on the second reading of the Courts and Tribunals Bill. Don’t let the anodyne name fool you – this is one of the most revolutionary pieces of legislation in our country’s history. The government intends to radically curtail the right we all hold to be tried by a jury when…
Read moreThe past few weeks have seen significant political and media attention lavished on the Sentencing Council of England and Wales, a small independent non-departmental public body which has hitherto attracted little interest from anybody outside the criminal justice system. What began as a sprinkling of misinformation on social media has snowballed into a political and…
Read moreFollowing the Court of Appeal handing down judgment yesterday in the appeals against sentence by the killers of Pc Andrew Harper, and the Attorney General’s application to refer the sentences as unduly lenient, I posted the below thread, looking at what the judgment means.
Read moreUPDATE: At 8am on Monday 23 March 2020, the Lord Chief Justice announced a suspension of new jury trials. The details are vague, and hint at a resumption “where specific safety arrangements have been put in place”, but for now, at least, it seems as if a level of sense has prevailed. Regrettably the announcement came far…
Read moreAs somebody who spends more time than is healthy banging the drum for better public understanding of the justice system, today’s announcement from the Ministry of Justice that sentence hearings in the Crown Court will be televised should be right up my wheelhouse. The proposal sidesteps any worries about a rush to an Americanised celebrification…
Read moreNo time can be afforded in 2019 to respect the dead. Not when there’s an election at stake, and the tantalising prospect of scoring cheap political points winks coyly at you from a special advisor’s email. So it is that, within 24 hours after the killings by Usman Khan at London Bridge, politicians have lined…
Read moreA piece for iNews today following Lord Hain’s decision to invoke Parliamentary privilege to name Philip Green in defiance of a court injunction. You can read my musings here.
Read moreThis will be (for now) my last word on the Tommy Robinson appeal. My legal analysis based on the facts as we now know them deals exhaustively and exhaustingly with the law; my reflections at the conclusion of that piece on whether I was too hasty to assume the correctness of the procedure, I stand…
Read moreToday the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) handed down judgment in the appeal of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (AKA Tommy Robinson), partially allowing the appeal and directing a rehearing at the Crown Court. What does this mean? Has Tommy been proven innocent? Is this a victory for freedom of speech? Let’s break it down. How did this…
Read moreA homeless man who picked up a lost race number and “completed” the London Marathon has been jailed for 16 weeks. Yesterday at Uxbridge magistrates’ court, Stanislaw Skupian (38) was sentenced by magistrates having pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing on 18 May to fraud, after he picked up a race card number dropped by…
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