Bad law reporting and a public dangerously disconnected from criminal justice

thesecretbarrister Bad Law, Contemplations, Law Inaction, Lawsplaining, Legal Aid, Politics, Sentencing

The criminal law has long had an image problem. Partly, the fault is internal: the ridiculous costume; the alienating hybrid of legalese and obsequious formality that renders court hearings nonsensical to anyone in the public gallery; the impenetrability and inaccessibility of updated statute and case law; the historic failure of those of us in the…

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Post-script: Mustafa Bashir, a non-existent cricket career and victim vulnerability

thesecretbarrister Bad Law, Judiciary, Lawsplaining, Politics, Sentencing

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)….

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The prosecution of Gazza raises some troubling questions

thesecretbarrister Bad Law, Lawsplaining

I am going to break my cardinal rule and offer comment on a legal case without having read the judgment or sentencing remarks. My excuse is that the case in question was a guilty plea at Dudley Magistrates’ Court, and my exhaustive research suggests that the District Judge has not followed the modern fashion of making his…

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Witless for the Prosecution: A brief response to the CPS’ response

thesecretbarrister Law Inaction, Politics

Last weekend, the Sun on Sunday gobbled up the juiciest, lowest-hanging fruit on the legal stories tree (if such an arboreal metaphor exists) and published a mini-splash on the various maladies rotting the Crown Prosecution Service. The article, “Witless for the Prosecution”, relied upon seemingly anecdotal evidence from two anonymous CPS whistleblowers – one a…

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