As people have asked (and you only have yourselves to blame)…
1. The precise charge isn’t reported, which is a huge error for reasons we’ll get to. But in any event, whatever the charge, there is no criminal offence in existence that carries a maximum sentence of 15 years.
2. “Prosecutors decided to pursue him on the lightest possible charge”. That charge is not specified. Presumably that means he was charged with possession of a controlled drug of Class B, rather than possession with intent to supply or production/cultivation of cannabis. But…
3. …if he was indeed charged with simple possession of cannabis, the Sentencing Guideline provides a starting point of a fine, and a range as low as a discharge (no action taken). So this doesn’t square with a community order being “the lowest possible sentence”.
4. Further light/confusion is shed when you read the report in the Independent. For instance, that curious comment by the judge suggesting the Defendant would have been “applauded” if the law were different? It wasn’t the judge. independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-n…
5. Although the Grimsby Telegraph, which carries a similar correction, has the name of the judge as “Sue Fortune”, rather than the Independent’s “Geraldine Kelly”. So who knows who said what. grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/news/grimsby-n…
6. The Independent appears to be the proud source of this story, boasting the “exclusive”. It also believes that a 6-month community order handed down by Grimsby magistrates’ court amounts to a “landmark ruling”, in what may be news to the Court of Appeal and UK Supreme Court.
7. In fairness to the reporter, their enthusiasm might have been fuelled by the comments attributed to the defence representative. I’ll be corrected by others, but in my experience there is nothing remotely unusual about a 6-month community order. I’ve seen scores.
8. Of course, in all three news reports, nobody bothers to report what charges the defendant actually faced. Which is really quite vital if your hook is “the CPS pursued a really low charge and the judge passed a really low sentence in this unusual case.”
9. And finally, kudos to Grimsby Telegraph for imbuing the Crown Prosecution Service with the power to *sentence* defendants.
Even when charges are *not pursued*. 🤯
(N.B. The Independent did *not* make this error, contrary to what is asserted below)
10. So there you have it. An absolute trifle of #FakeLaw and abominable journalism.
The cause, it seems, is that no qualified court reporter was actually in court to hear what happened.
This is a huge problem. Local court reporters are the lifeblood of democracy. We need them.
11. Good local court reporters ensure that the public know what is happening in their justice system. They hold power to account. They preserve open justice.
But they, like local journalism as a whole, are endangered.
Without them, as this story shows, we are in trouble.
P.S. Thanks to @legalstyleblog for this correction. I’d overlooked that in 2019 the government abandoned centuries of convention regarding maximum sentences and introduced 15 years (previous highest increments were 14 years and life) as the maximum for certain terrorism offences.
The thread offers a hypothetical of a person breaking a car window to rescue a child, only to find themselves charged with criminal damage and prevented by the judge from mentioning this critical circumstance to the jury.
Just like climate activists.
Only…it’s false.
If you’re sitting cosily for a law lecture (and who among us is not?), the issue arises from one of the legal defences available to criminal damage.
It is a defence if you believe the owner consented or *would have consented* had they known of the damage and its circumstances.
As the issue of compensation for miscarriages of justice is rightly in the news, it’s timely to note that in 2014, the government changed the law to make it all but impossible for people wrongly convicted and imprisoned to claim compensation.
Chris Grayling and Theresa May led the charge to deprive the wrongly convicted of compensation, changing the rules so that those people had to effectively prove their innocence - an impossible standard to meet.
The details are in Stories of The Law & How It’s Broken.
When this spiteful non-compensation scheme was challenged in the courts, the current crop of politicians - those who are now positioning themselves as champions of the wrongfully convicted - fought all the way to uphold it.
Can highly recommend this piece in today’s Sunday Times if you’re looking for a facile misunderstanding of what a barrister actually does.
If Mr Syed had bothered to speak to a barrister, or indulge in the most cursory research, he would have learned at least two things: 🧵
1. 90% of a barrister’s career is spent on making decisions. Advising on courses of action, of legal risk, future consequences, assessing evidence and making split-second judgement calls (both in and out of court) that can make an irrevocable decision to a person’s life.
2. It’s an obvious one, and an old favourite, but given that it seems to take Mr Syed by surprise:
BARRISTERS ARE NOT THEIR CLIENTS.
We ask questions in court and test evidence, on behalf of whoever instructs us, because that is our job.
Readers are invited to conclude that £100,000 (£100,028, to be precise) is too much to spend on this very serious case, in which an MP was murdered. A “ridiculous amount of money”, we’re reliably told by Conservative MP @nigelmills.
Well let’s see.
The first teeny, tiny point - and I really am being picky - is that, despite @nigelmills confidently asserting that the defendant “admitted the killing”, that’s not actually true. Not really.
Because the same article tells us that he denied murder and had a 7-day trial.
A final (for now) word on my colleagues who don’t and can’t prosecute criminal cases, but are performatively declaring that they *won’t* prosecute certain types of cases.
This second paragraph vividly illustrates the danger to which they are exposing us criminal practitioners.
The whole point of the cab rank rule is that it provides the answer to the question: “How can you represent [X]?”, when X is an unpopular client or cause.
The minute we are perceived to be picking and choosing between “good” and “bad” defendants, it all breaks down.
It means - as the activists explicitly state - that other barristers can be targeted. “Your colleagues refuse to represent X, so why are you?”
It aligns us personally with our clients.
It exposes those of us who defend & prosecute the most dangerous criminals to very real risk