Diary of a Criminal Solicitor: International Law

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International Law

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: August 02, 2012 at 06:57:00

Video Recording of Interviews

Posted on November 07, 2007
This 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, 2007
District 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, 2007
It 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, 2007
CJSSS 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...

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Abuse

Posted on January 21, 2007
Last 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, 2007
Marketing 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, 2007
I 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, 2007
The 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, 2007
The 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, 2007
Here 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, 2006
My 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, 2006
A 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, 2006
Apologies 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, 2006
The 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, 2006
One 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, 2006
The 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, 2006
I 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, 2006
I 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, 2006
The 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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