Features

Having spent two weeks in the Lioness Mountains, Peter Smith turns the spotlight onto the developing justice system he encountered there.  

Mention Sierra Leone and one’s first thoughts are of a small, poor country in sub-Saharan Africa, the grimiest part of the continent, still recovering from a brutal insurgency that was only ended when Tony Blair sent British forces to intervene in 2000. 

Charlotte Rachael Proudman on the law surrounding forced marriage and the developments surrounding its criminalisation  

On Friday 8 June 2012 the Government announced that forced marriage will become a specific criminal offence. This follows the announcement in October 2011 that breaches of forced marriage protection orders (FMPOs) will likewise be criminalised. The legislation will not be introduced until the 2013/2014 Parliamentary session. 

The decision to criminalise forced marriage emanates from concerns that the current legal initiatives are not doing enough. Between January and May 2012, the forced marriage unit (FMU) provided advice and support in 594 cases and the numbers of reported instances increase each year. In addition to forced marriages occurring in Britain, the UK’s embassies and high commissions continue to rescue British victims who are forced into marriages overseas, and repatriate them back to the UK. Research carried out by the Department for Children, Schools and Families’ estimated that the ‘national prevalence of reported cases’ of forced marriages in England was between 5000 and 8000. 

The DSP is to the Armed Forces what the DPP is to civilians. Bruce Houlder QC DL, the first Director of Service Prosecutions, reflects upon his years in the role.  

In May 2008, after some 39 years at the Bar, I took up the challenge to create a new prosecuting authority for the Armed Services, and thus became the first Director of Service Prosecutions (DSP). The role was created by the Armed Forces Act 2006 which wrought significant changes to the service justice system. I am glad I took the leap. I have worked alongside intelligent, well motivated servicemen and women, and have been left with an enormous respect for the role they play in support of Service law and discipline, in the advisory sector, on operations, and as prosecutors. Initial difficulties and some avoidable obstructions were soon swept away, and a well respected joint prosecuting authority has emerged. 

Do the Right Thing is a charity through which disabled people take part in the training of others. Graham Hopkins explains how the Bar could benefit when training its members in how to deal with vulnerable witnesses.  

With some cracking one-liners and visual jokes, the Dublin director Damien O’Donnell’s 2004 comedy-drama “Inside I’m Dancing ” makes a powerful plea for equality for disabled people in society. There are undoubtedly convincing and strong performances from the lead actors. But therein also lay the film’s controversy. As BBC critic Neil Smith pointed out, O’Donnell, by “casting able-bodied actors as his wheelchair-driving protagonists unavoidably weakens his argument.” 

Neelam Sarkaria asks whether it is time for the first prosecution under the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003  

The making of an allegation of Female Genital Mutilation is affected by a number of factors, including cultural taboo and the reluctance to report the crime to the police, especially as other family members may be involved. This makes it even harder for the victim to come forward to report the crime and to make a statement. Criminal justice agencies are working closely together to raise awareness and to ensure that whenever cases are reported, they are thoroughly investigated. Support and protection is also offered to victims and witnesses throughout the criminal justice process. Educating communities to abandon the practice is considered the best way forward to break the cycle of mutilation. 

From January 2013, as QASA (Crime) starts to roll out across the country, judges will be the evaluators of the advocacy in Crown Courts. Here,  Counsel looks at the training the judiciary is receiving and the criteria it will have to apply.  

An essential element of any quality assurance scheme is confidence in the integrity of the process. When the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (Crime) (‘QASA’) begins to roll out in January 2013, all Crown Court advocates who do trials will be evaluated by the judiciary. How can the judges, given the role of assessing the quality of advocacy in their courts, produce results which are consistent and based on the advocacy itself? To answer that question, and before the scheme goes ‘live’ on any circuit, every judge who has agreed to take part must undergo a seminar training. 

Job title: Silk, Doughty Street Chambers 

Doughty Street Chambers is a human rights and civil liberties practice with a national and international profile in criminal, civil, administrative, public and international law.  

You represented Tony Nicklinson – who suffered ‘locked-in’ syndrome - in his landmark case challenging the law on assisted dying. How did you become involved in that case?
Tony’s case is a progression of the work I have done throughout my career around autonomy and choice.  I have a public law and human rights practice which emphasises, among others, the rights of persons with disabilities. Autonomy links the right to make end of life decisions with, for example, the right of disabled persons to live independently in the community, and both are features of my practice. I represented Debbie Purdy in her successful appeal to the House of Lords which resulted in the DPP issuing his guidelines on prosecution in assisted suicide cases. The solicitor in Debbie Purdy’s case, Saimo Chahal, and I have worked together for many years so it was a natural fit for us to do so again for Tony and his family, who are carrying on the case now Tony has died. 

David Wurtzel examines the giving of evidence by children, their cross examination and section 28 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999  

On July 24 we marked the tenth anniversary of special measures, the legislative package which was brought into effect in 2002 in order to improve the quality of evidence of vulnerable witnesses in the criminal courts ‘in terms of completeness, coherence and accuracy’. 

It was therefore an apt time to publish “Children and cross examination: time to change the rules ?,” a book based on papers delivered at an internationally-attended seminar at Cambridge University in April 2011. It is edited by Professor John Spencer and Professor Michael Lamb; Professor Spencer wrote the introduction and conclusion. The underlying issue in the book is the need in England to bring into effect section 28 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999. This is the one special measure still languishing unused on the statute book. It would allow a vulnerable witness’s entire evidence including cross examination to be pre-recorded. The witness would not then have to attend the trial and the whole process would be completed for them much closer in time to the events in question. 

Toby Craig and Charles Hale review this year’s party conference season for Counsel 

Life imitating art
Returning to our screens to satirise life in Coalition, The Thick of It  has long sought to shine a light on some of the more ridiculous elements of party politics. Its success lies, in part, in the extreme caricatures it adopts. Real life couldn’t possibly be that bad. And that must have been on the writers’ minds when they thought up an episode in which the fictional Lib Dem team agreed to launch a ‘Community Bank’, requiring a mere £2bn of public funds, to the horror of their Coalition partners. So imagine their glee when that episode was broadcast in the same week as Vince Cable took to the Lib Dem conference stage to announce...a state bank requiring £1bn of public funds and extensive Government guarantees. Apparently you could make it up. And there was still time to bring back the spectre of a Mansion Tax, which lasted all of a few days before the Conservatives ruled it out. 

A. Hayden QC, HHJ J. Penna, M. Allman, S. Greenan, E. Latvio
ISBN: 978 1 84661 319 7
March 2012
Publisher: Jordan Publishing
Price: £55

Children and same sex families (Family Law, Jordan Publishing 2012) by Anthony Hayden QC, Marisa Allman, Sarah Greenan, Elina Nhinda-Latvia and Judge Jai Penna highlights the many complexities which arise from same sex couples becoming parents.  The very meaning of parenthood is being re-evaluated in courts dealing with same sex couples, especially if such couples have an arrangement with a sperm donor or a surrogate mother. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 (HFEA 2008) does away with the old presumption that a biological parent is, in fact, a legal parent, as the book’s fascinating chapter on parenthood shows in detail.