Diary of a Criminal Solicitor 
From a solicitor who works doing purely criminal defense work and who often finds himself in utter amazement or red faced with anger working at Police Stations, Magistrates Courts, and Crown Courts. Rants and raves about anything and everything that gets up his nose.
Post Frequency: 0.2/day Last Entry: March 17, 2008 at 15:30:00 Recent Entries: 31
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Can I Complain Please?
Posted on March 17, 2008I attended at my local Police Station today to assist a Client who was attending at the Police Station on bail to be reinterviewed. As I was waiting for the Officer to collect my Client and myself I stood listening to a conversation that a member of the public was having with one of the Station's civilian station office staff...
How Odd
Posted on March 14, 2008I read most of the media headlines published each day. there are a few stories every now and then that stick out. An article from the Times caught my attention today. Apparently a jury acquitted a man of murder and then some of the members of jury waited to see the Defendant to hug him!?A pensioner who was accused of killing his partner and then confessing to his pet cats was cleared of murder and manslaughter today ? and then hugged by members of the jury before leaving the courtroom...
Waste of Time
Posted on March 11, 2008When I was on call recently I received a call from the Defence Solicitor Call centre informing me that one of my firm's Clients had been arrested and detained for breaching his bail conditions. When a person is arrested for breaching their Court bail conditions the Police have to produce the Client before a Court within 24 hours of the arrest, or 48 hours if the arrest if a Court is not sitting within the next 24 hours...
Dropped Cases
Posted on March 11, 2008The Times has published an article setting out that last year more than 2,000 cases were thrown out of Court as the case was not ready:More than 2,000 cases that should have gone to trial in the Crown Court were thrown out last year because they were not ready, a watchdog says today...
Poor Advocates
Posted on March 05, 2008Advocacy is one part of the job of being a criminal solicitor. I have worked with people in the past who shy away from representing Clients in Court, as they prefer to work in the office or at the Police Station. I have never understood why a litigator would not enjoy standing up in Court and making their points to the tribunal...
Free CPD
Posted on March 02, 2008The Solicitors Regulation Authority is responsible for making sure that solicitors ensure that they keep up to date with changes in law and procedure. This is done by requiring that solicitors obtain 16 Continuing Professional Development (otherwise known as CPD) credits each year...
Private Investigator
Posted on January 05, 2008Criminal defence firms are getting jumpy as 14th January 2008 approaches. On 14th January 2008 new General Criminal Contracts begin for firms who are still undertaking legal aid criminal defence work. On 30th November 2007 firms had to declare how many duty solicitors they employed as of 30th November 2007 in order to be awarded rota slots on duty solicitor rotas for police station work and magistrates court work...
Weird Stories in the Media
Posted on November 28, 2007Whilst browsing through news stories today I came across two distinctly odd news reports.The first news report was about a prisoner who decided to cut his penis off with a razor blade.The second news report was about a defence that a Defendant ran at Court when prosecuted for various things including indecent exposure...
Christmas List
Posted on November 25, 2007I went out over the weekend with the wife and did some Christmas shopping. My wife is very organised and I suspect that by next weekend she will have dragged me around all of the local shops and will have finished off our Christmas shopping for 2007. Whilst I was out I was with my two kids and we were looking at the Nintendo DS games...
Send Him Down
Posted on November 21, 2007I went to a Youth Court recently to represent a young man where he was due to be sentenced for an offence of assault occasioning actual bodily harm. ABH is an offence that can span a wide range of injuries from the fairly trivial to the rather serious...
Would You Like A Bind Over for £50,000 Worth Of Criminal Damage?
Posted on November 09, 2007The Crown Prosecution Service web site gives guidance on bind overs:If circumstances justify, a prosecutor may invite the court to consider exercising its power to bind a defendant over as an alternative to prosecution for a criminal offence. The prosecutor should only invite the court to exercise this power once he has made a firm and settled decision to offer no evidence in the criminal proceedings...
Appropriate Adults
Posted on November 09, 2007If a person under the age of 17 is arrested and detained at the Police Station they must have an appropriate adult attend at the Police Station to act as a parent or guardian to ensure they understand the Police procedures, and their rights and entitlements...
Video Recording of Interviews
Posted on November 07, 2007This is an amusing video of a 'mock' Police video with a suspect:The Police did trial video interviews a number of years ago to see whether playing a video of an interview at trial would have any impact on a Court or jury. When I used to work in North London there was a particular Police Station that was part of the Home Office pilot to test video interviews...
DJ Cooper
Posted on November 07, 2007District Judge Cooper has been visiting my local Court this week. He is a famous character who has a 'street name' of Custody Cooper because of his unusual style of locking people up to get them to change their plea, or as a sentence. I have encountered Mr...
Bangin'
Posted on November 07, 2007It is common practice for some prisoners to bang on their cell doors. It is unusual to spend any length of time in either a Police Station or Court cells and not to hear banging on the cell doors accompanied by some form of shouting.About a week ago I went to a local Police Station and arrived about 4...
CJSSS
Posted on November 05, 2007CJSSS is an acronym for Criminal Justice Speedy Summary Justice. Last week my local Magistrates Court had its first hearings under the CJSSS banner. The theory behind CJSSS is that the whole criminal justice system in the Magistrates Court will suddenly speed up...
Abuse
Posted on January 21, 2007Last week I received a leaflet from the London Criminal Courts Solicitors Association advertising one of it's new training courses. I probably receive one of these leaflets a week and usually I briefly look at the leaflet and throw it away. The only reason for me to actually read the leaflet that I received was because I had been told that I needed some training so I should attend the training course that this particular leaflet was advertising...
Marketing
Posted on January 15, 2007Marketing for criminal clients has always been a problem. Advertising to the general public about a firms criminal department never usually works as the people you are trying to reach often fail to respond to such adverts. Word of mouth is king, and reputations are very important...
Doomed
Posted on January 09, 2007I went to my local Magistrates Court today. A man was in the cells as it was alleged that he had breached his bail conditions. I spoke with the Prosecutor and obtained some papers on the case before going down to the cells to visit the man. When I spoke to the Serco Custody Staff I was told that the man had his own solicitor and that that firm of solicitors had asked if I could phone them...
Utter Rubbish
Posted on January 08, 2007The Legal Services Commission has finally published an evaluation report of the Public Defender Service. The Public Defender Service was an experiment set up by the Legal Services Commission in 2000 to see what running a criminal defence practice was actually like...
Wanted: For Crimes Against Common Sense
Posted on January 05, 2007The Daily Mail is a newspaper that publishes a lot of amusing stories. The articles are usually amusing for the content published or the viewpoint that the paper takes. The article with the headline, "Wanted: for crimes against common sense," caught my eye: A Chief constable was accused of 'madness' last night after refusing to release pictures of two escaped murderers amid fears it might breach their human rights...
Good Planning
Posted on January 05, 2007Here is a true story of how badly most Clients will plan their offending. Over the Christmas period a few people got together and dreamt up a scheme to make some fast money. You would think that if they actually put some thought in to it that the plan would be reasonable and that they would probably get away with the crime...
Emmerdale
Posted on November 08, 2006My wife likes to watch Emmerdale on the television and from time to time, when I am not working late, I will sometimes see programmes like Emmerdale on the television.I watched Emmerdale last night and got rather angry. I am not a good person to sit with when there is some kind of legal drama on the television as I shout out when they have got something wrong...
Means Tested Legal Aid
Posted on October 05, 2006A new legal aid system has been introduced, and as from 2nd October 2006 criminal legal aid has reverted to means testing. To get legal aid for a criminal case you now need to pass the interests of justice test and the means test. For the past seven or eight years you simply had to pass the interests of justice test...
Where Have I Been?
Posted on October 05, 2006Apologies to my loyal readers for the lack of posts recently but I have found that my time has been taken up racing all over the place with work, I have been left with little time to tap away at my keyboard to post messages on this blog.Where have I been in the past two weeks then? I have made three trips to Ipswich Crown court to get a difficult rape trial off the ground...
Victims Advisory Panel - Why?
Posted on October 05, 2006The Home Office has announced the creation of the Victims Advisory Panel:The new panel will include people who have suffered from crimes such as burglary, anti-social behavior and hate crime, or who are survivors of victims of serious violent crime.It will examine the way victims and witnesses are treated and the way their experiences are handled by the criminal justice system, and then make formal recommendations for changes directly to Ministers...
Arghhh!!!
Posted on September 26, 2006One of my worst nightmares became a reality this week. I had been preparing a matter for a Crown Court trial over the past six months. I had briefed experienced Counsel to deal with the trial. My Client had met the barrister a number of times and was very happy with their service...
More Doom and Gloom
Posted on September 26, 2006The Law Society has published a report on the impact that the Carter reforms are going to have on criminal defence work. The Solicitors Journal has published a good article on the bad news that this report delivers:A report commissioned by the Law Society and published this morning predicts that over 800 legal aid firms could be forced out of business if the reform proposed by Lord Carter goes through as it is...
Phew
Posted on September 24, 2006I recently represented a Client for a matter of driving without due care and attention. As the Client's case did not qualify for legal aid they funded their case on a private basis.The case took about six months to deal with from start to finish. The trial took place recently and I am pleased to report that I secured another acquittal...
Can't You Just Make It Up?
Posted on September 19, 2006I spent most of my day today at my local Magistrates Court. I dealt with a variety of cases including one matter where my Client had previously pleaded guilty to driving without insurance and his case had been adjourned until today for him to argue that despite being a potential totter he should not be disqualified from driving due to 'exceptional hardship'...
Re-re-balancing The Criminal Justice System
Posted on September 17, 2006The BBC has reported that the Home Secretary is going to issue another consultation paper where he seeks to re-balance the Criminal Justice System again:Judges could be stopped from freeing criminals on legal technicalities under government plans. Home Secretary John Reid, who says he wants to "rebalance criminal justice in favour of victims", will launch a consultation on how to achieve his aim...
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It is my understanding that the 6th Amendment requires, that if you can't afford a lawyer in a criminal case, the Court must provide a lawyer in your defense at no charge to you. However, in a civil case no such protecti
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