Criminal

Baroness Stern’s independent review into the way in which rape complaints are handled is “a well-researched and important piece of work”, Lord Justice Thomas, deputy head of Criminal Justice, has said. “We hope it will lead to the public being better informed about the way in which rape cases are dealt with.”

The Bar Council recently responded to the Commission’s Green Paper on the possible extension of the European Evidence Warrant, to cover evidence that is not yet in existence (e.g. taking a witness statement) or that exists but is not directly available without further action (e.g. obtaining DNA samples). The existing EEW is widely seen in practice as too limited in scope. The Bar is calling for defence rights to be dealt with first, and for provision to facilitate the obtaining of defence evidence cross-border too. At the time of writing it is not yet clear whether the Commission will issue its own proposal, or be beaten to it by a Member State proposal on the issue of obtainability of evidence, which is also in the works. 

Oliver Doherty, who attended the 2009 annual Salzburg Summer School on international criminal law, commends the course to students and junior practitioners alike.  

At the end of the Bar Vocational Course, (soon to become the Bar Professional Training Course) many aspiring barristers, whether or not they have secured pupillages, seek opportunities for volunteering and broadening their horizons, including short university courses which focus on particular areas of practice. 

Dedicated drug courts are being established to combat drug abuse.  Elizabeth Forrester reflects on how the Drug Court in Jamaica and the Family Drug and Alcohol Court in London are tackling this worldwide issue 

The worldwide disease that is drug abuse has traditionally been attacked from two sides: the Ministry of Defence, customs, the police and the criminal justice system are used to strike at the supply of drugs; and the Ministry of Health, State welfare, charities, NGOs and social workers tackle the demand for them. When drug addicts commit crimes, they are punished accordingly; when drug addicts cannot care for their children, the State removes them. Still, despite all the sentencing guidelines and educational efforts, it is painfully clear that these measures do not stop this disease from progressing. Addicts sent to prison, or even given unpaid work requirements, fuel their habits more easily than before, and are just as likely to reoffend upon release. Desperate, addicted mothers who have children removed into the care system become more desperate—they often have more babies with withdrawal symptoms which are removed from them again. 

The decision in R v Barker on child witness evidence in criminal cases establishes that the competency test is the same for children and adults, write Professor Penny Cooper and David Wurtzel.  

With the decision in R v Barker [2010] EWCA Crim 4 the matter of children giving evidence in criminal trials has, so to speak, come of age. On 1 May 2009 at The Old Bailey, Baby Peter’s step-father, Stephen Barker, was convicted of the anal rape of a girl, “X”, who was less than three years’ old at the time of the offence. She was four and a half years’ old when she gave evidence. X had been living with her mother Tracey Connelly, Stephen Barker and his brother. At the age of two years and ten months X was taken into care following the unnatural death of Baby Peter. X made disclosures to her foster carer of sexual abuse by Barker and subsequently to a child psychologist who was seeing her for the purposes of care proceedings. Six months after the first allegation she was interviewed on video under “Achieving Best Evidence in Criminal Proceeding” (“the ABE interview”). The trial for anal rape of a child under 13 was postponed until after the murder trial in the Baby Peter case. X watched her ABE interview a few days before the trial; it stood as her evidence-in-chief. She was cross-examined by leading counsel for her mother and for Barker. 

Which lawyers have played first class cricket? Daniel Lightman investigates 

There is a long tradition of lawyer-cricketers. Perhaps the first was William Byrd (1674–1744). Born in Virginia, where his father was an early settler from England, he was sent to English public school and went on to be called to the Bar and join the Inner Temple. In 1704, on his father’s death, Byrd returned to Virginia to take over his family’s estates, and is said to have introduced cricket there. Between 1709 and 1712 William Byrd kept a secret diary, the entry for 25 April 1709 recording: “I rose at 6 o’clock and read a chapter in Hebrew. About 10 o’clock Dr Blair, and Major and Captain Harrison came to see us. After I had given them a glass of sack we played cricket. I ate boiled beef for my dinner. Then we played at shooting with arrows and went to cricket again till dark.” 

Book review
Felicity Gerry and Catarina Sjölin
Wildy, Simmonds and Hill, January 2010, £69, ISBN 0854900357 

Once a month, between February 1999 and April 2000—usually on a Thursday—a very disparate group of mainly middle-aged men and women met at Queen Anne’s Gate to talk about sex. Known collectively to ourselves—and to the Home Office receptionists—as the “Sex Offenders” we were the members of Jack Straw’s Steering Group, set up to review the law on sex offences. Essentially we were given a blank sheet of paper on which we were encouraged to set out a blueprint for a new sex offences law for the next generation or three. Our report “Setting the Boundaries” contained a total of 62 recommendations. It was published in July 2000. It formed the basis for the government’s Sexual Offences Bill, which received  Royal Assent on 20 November 2003 and came into force on 1 May 2004. Five years later the new case law is beginning to develop—and the books are starting to proliferate. 

Adrian Hughes QC and Steven Thompson discuss the Bar Council’s engagement with China’s rapidly developing legal market.  

Change in China has been rapid and extraordinary since the first visit of a Bar Council delegation 20 years ago. At that time, the Pu Dong commercial area of Shanghai was still marshland and the emerging Chinese legal profession entering only its second decade. Now, as the main image of Pu Dong’s financial district shows (see below), the landscape is completely different. 

David Ormerod, The Right Honourable Lord Justice Hooper
OUP, October 2009, £221.74 978-0-19-557423-0 

This work is now in its 20th edition since its re-incarnation by HHJ Peter Murphy, who has now stood down as Emeritus Editor. Criminal practitioners, and his publishers, owe him a great debt of gratitude. The teams of contributors and editors are immensely strong, providing as near a guarantee as is possible of an accurate, erudite work which combines practical guidance with excellent analysis. 

THE Bar Council has taken the first step toward a judicial review (JR) of two consultations on Advocates Graduated Fees and Very High Cost Cases (VHCCs) which are being conducted by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and the Legal Services Commission (LSC) respectively. 

The Bar Council has instructed solicitors to write to the MoJ and the LSC, in accordance with the pre-action protocol for judicial review claims. The principal basis for the Bar Council’s claim is that the consultation exercise is inadequate and unfair. The Bar Council’s decision to proceed with an application for JR has not been taken lightly. It has been more than twenty years since the Bar Council last instituted JR proceedings against the Government, despite a series of poorly handled reviews and efforts to reform the legal aid system.