Thread by @BarristerSecret

Quick thread to deal with this legal aid nonsense in today’s Mail:

[THREAD]

google.co.uk/amp/s/www.dail…

1. This man did not “get £52,000”. His solicitors, barristers and expert witnesses together received the gross figure of £34,127.

2. That is a gross figure - including VAT which is paid back to the Treasury - representing the work for *two* trials - murder and manslaughter.

3. That gross figure represents months of work carried out by leading experts in the field of law and medicine. It will, inevitably, also be a fraction of the cost that the state will have incurred prosecuting him. And it, like all legal aid, ensures that he was fairly convicted.

4. For a man whose professional life is supposedly dedicated to crime prevention, David Spencer has a worryingly poor understanding of the criminal law.

This career criminal can and will be “forced to hand over his ill-gotten gains.” It’s called the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.

5. Jen Lock and John O’Connell’s comments are so stupid that my eyes almost fell out. Let’s all just pretend we didn’t hear them and move on. For their sakes.

6. And we conclude with a non-sequitur - the Jack Shepherd case. A case in which, as I’ve blogged elsewhere, legal aid is a total non-issue, but it allows the Mail to bang its drum against a fair criminal justice system.

7. Without criminal legal aid, those accused of criminal offences would represent themselves. It means that murderers would cross-examine the families of their victims. Rapists would cross-examine their victims. Trials would take ten times as long and be ten times as costly.

8. So from now on, I’m going to deal with this kind of story from the Mail and the Mirror and the Sun and any other two-bit fiction-peddler by interpreting it as them calling for victims of crime to be cross-examined by their victims. For that, by implication, is what they seek.

9. The Daily Mail is calling for gangland killers to cross-examine *in person* the families of their victims, in prolonged and expensive court proceedings.

If you think this is as appalling as I do, please let them know.

google.co.uk/amp/s/www.dail…