Yesterday I wrote something for the New Statesman on the Grenfell Inquiry and the political fearmongering over the appointment of Sir Martin Moore-Bick. The piece can be found here: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2017/07/grenfell-inquiry-critics-martin-moore-bick-are-dabbling-fearmongeringp
Read moreGoodbye Liz Truss, Hello David Lidington – a brief look at the new Lord Chancellor
Liz Truss, we hardly knew ye. Three days short of eleven months since her appointment as Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor in Theresa May’s debut cabinet, Ms Truss bows out to a slow handclap. Her achievements can be shortly listed, for they are none. Liz Truss never asked for the job, and,…
Read moreAn Oxford medical student stabbed her boyfriend with a bread knife. So why is she not going to prison?
Remember all the fun we had earlier this year with the Cricket Bat Case? You know the one – where the defendant, Mustafa Bashir, assaulted his wife with a cricket bat, forced her to drink bleach and was given a suspended sentence, partially because the judge took account of the defendant having been offered a…
Read morePost-script: Mustafa Bashir, a non-existent cricket career and victim vulnerability
As predicted in my last post, Mustafa Bashir, the wife-beating amateur cricketer who received a suspended sentence of 18 months’ imprisonment after hitting his wife with a cricket bat and forcing her to drink bleach, was today recalled to court and re-sentenced under the “slip rule” (section 155 of the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000)….
Read moreWas the cricketer who forced his wife to drink bleach spared prison because his wife was “too intelligent”?
A quick one for tonight. Several tweeters have today wondered, queried and thundered about a news report hot out of Manchester Crown Court, which tells of an amateur local cricketer who assaulted his wife with a cricket bat and forced her to drink bleach, and who, in the typical tabloid argot, Walked Free From Court. How,…
Read moreThe Marine A judgment – a handy 10-point guide
1. So, what’s this “Marine A” malarkey all about then? Marine A, or Sgt Alexander Blackman, today succeeded in his appeal against his conviction for murdering a wounded Taliban insurgent whilst on a tour of Afghanistan in 2011. The Court Martial Appeal Court (CMAC) quashed his conviction for murder and substituted a conviction for manslaughter on the grounds of…
Read moreAccusing this judge of “victim blaming” is unfair, wrong and dangerous
On Friday 10 March 2017, HHJ Lindsey Kushner Q.C. drew a 43-year legal career to a close by detaining a rapist for six years. After 14 years on the bench, her final trial at Manchester Crown Court involved a set of facts grimly familiar to criminal practitioners, in which the defendant, Ricardo Rodrigues-Fortes-Gomes (19), led…
Read moreWill Quince MP: An addendum
This serves as an addendum to the previous post, but I thought it was worthy of attention in its own right. To those who missed it, a brief recap: Will Quince, MP for Colchester, publicised a letter he had sent to the Lord Chancellor, in which he expressed his view that a sentence passed in a…
Read moreA court soft on burglars, or an MP missing the facts?
It would be nice to usher in 2017 with an exciting fresh take on a vibrant, buzzing legal issue of the day. As it is, the first post of the New Year is to be spent – and I fear this will be a recurring theme – reminding an elected Member of Parliament how the law works….
Read moreWere the judges “incompetent f****-ups” to refuse Marine A bail?
There is a risk, I am acutely aware, of this blog appearing to transmogrify into The Secret Judicial Cheerleader. Which it is not. By way of pre-emptive self-defence, I should point out that much of my professional life is spent politely pointing out to judges why, in my respectful submission, the course they are thinking…
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