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…
Read moreKatie Hopkins and the judiciary: another pointless lie
On the day that Katie Hopkins’ wilful disregard for the truth landed her, and the Daily Mail, in £150,000 worth of piping hot water, it is reassuring to see that she has not been deterred from jumping straight back on her unicorn. After Hopkins viciously libelled a family of Muslims as Al-Qaeda supporters in her…
Read moreLouise Mensch’s claims that Thomas Mair had an unfair trial are unsupported and wildly dangerous
There’s something particularly undignified about a spiralling Twitter spat. The cumulative ‘quote tweeting’ and punctuated “replies” designed to alert innocent passers by to your often solipsistic, and usually entirely pointless, tit for tat exchanges with someone you’ve never met and have no desire to know. I am guilty of indulging in such indignity this afternoon, after taking umbrage at…
Read moreWhat would happen to Brock Turner in an English criminal court?
On 18 January 2015, Brock Allen Turner committed a series of serious sexual assaults against an unconscious woman on an American university campus. Two graduate students at Stanford University saw the 20-year old Turner lying on top of the motionless victim behind a dumpster. Her underwear and bra had been partially removed, and Turner was…
Read moreYou call this justice? On yer bike
Since this blog was ill-advisedly conceived 10 months ago, I have directed a handful of pot shots towards a variety of people. The media – the Metro and the BBC are notable recidivists in poor legal reporting – MPs, magistrates, the CPS, the Ministry of Justice, and more recently, albeit a fight not of my…
Read moreThe Metro should be ashamed of this blatant dishonesty
Another Thursday, another news outlet seemingly heck bent on grabbing my dander and yanking it to attention. Today is the turn of the Metro to use its front page to demonstrate how to merrily defecate on the quaint outmoded journalistic principles of “fairness” and “accuracy”. Although, extending to the Metro the fairness that it has…
Read moreGayle Newland’s sentence was both entirely proper and wildly disproportionate
And so here we are again. The relentless churn through the predictable life-cycle of the tabloid-tickling criminal case. Unusual case through to polarising verdict, through to “controversial” sentence and culminating in a red-top digging out a different case sentenced by the same judge to make whatever point fits their agenda. The unusual case du jour…
Read moreIs it worse to rape little Asian girls than little white girls?
A quick apology – I’m coming to this story a little late. That is partially my fault, and partially the fault of Lord Ashcroft and his delicious third-hand allegations of porcine impropriety. It has been a distracting few days. This ground was stomped upon a little by various commentators at the end of last week, but,…
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