Interesting article, Joshua. Your GIGO point is a good one, but it does beg the question what judges think their role is. This is a very experienced puisne judge who, before being promoted, sat as a senior circuit judge and Recorder of Sheffield. So, he is incredibly experienced, and should not need to rely on counsel to know that 'custody for life' would be the wrong words to say (technically for both adults and children!).
The Letby issue is interesting in that obviously the emotion around it all is high. It seems extraordinary that a senior barrister should decide that he should conduct litigation in the media and not in the courts (via the CCRC). The CCRC does not have a particularly good reputation of late, of course, so that may be one reason, but I do find it quite distasteful that a barrister should be adopting American tactics of making partisan press statements.
My understanding, and I accept this could be wrong, is that at the time it was noted that even those experts who were casting doubt on the prosecution evidence, could not say that she did not do it. No defence barrister in a case as emotional as that one, is going to put an expert witness on the stand to hear, in cross-examination that it is possible that their client did kill the children.
The Law Commission's report should have been implemented (as should many other reports!), but it's less than clear to me that it would have made any difference. The experts would have passed that hurdle.
Thank you, Joshua. I have read and applaud your Gazette column. Laddish and crude as its content may be, Private Eye over recent editions had awakened serious doubts over the Letby case before McDonald’s press conferences. My very good friend and fellow campaigner Glyn Maddocks KC (Hons) from his recent media commentary seems to be on more or less the same page as yourself in his views concerning necessary reforms. On the evidence available to both the Crown and the defence, to the Judge and the jury this to my mind has nothing to do with removing juries from the equation which one government after another has hankered after and everything to do with reforms along the general lines which Sir Brian Leveson and now you identify. How can it be to do with the jury process with this and other potential and actual miscarriages when in good faith and -little doubt- conscientiousness they can appraise only that put before them. Glyn and I as I believe fully agree that once administrations of whichever persuasion, covering Blairite to Sunak, had wished to regard the CCRC as more or less past its “sell-by” date since they had “been there, done that-let’s move on” then it would be an underfunded, embarrassing entity, best shunted off into a siding. I tried to persuade political office holders of both principal parties to take an interest but to no avail. Living still and until recently practising as I do and did in Brum, I saw interest in that last resort body dwindle so that it was as though it had become the dotty relative in the attic who had grudgingly to be left there in peace. Underfunding led to part time working for its Chair, Chief Executive and staff, whom I find it unreasonable to blame since there must have been times when the Court of Appeal had given them a torrid time over referrals and governments had displayed apparent indifference where they had grown afraid of lifting their heads above the parapet. And now here the Commission is in line to be THE handy scapegoat for example in the Malkinson case. May it collectively have been at fault sometimes? Inquiry as we can hope may reveal. Is that body in any way remotely likely to have been the only one in such glaring cases to have defaulted? Of course NOT.
Interesting article, Joshua. Your GIGO point is a good one, but it does beg the question what judges think their role is. This is a very experienced puisne judge who, before being promoted, sat as a senior circuit judge and Recorder of Sheffield. So, he is incredibly experienced, and should not need to rely on counsel to know that 'custody for life' would be the wrong words to say (technically for both adults and children!).
The Letby issue is interesting in that obviously the emotion around it all is high. It seems extraordinary that a senior barrister should decide that he should conduct litigation in the media and not in the courts (via the CCRC). The CCRC does not have a particularly good reputation of late, of course, so that may be one reason, but I do find it quite distasteful that a barrister should be adopting American tactics of making partisan press statements.
My understanding, and I accept this could be wrong, is that at the time it was noted that even those experts who were casting doubt on the prosecution evidence, could not say that she did not do it. No defence barrister in a case as emotional as that one, is going to put an expert witness on the stand to hear, in cross-examination that it is possible that their client did kill the children.
The Law Commission's report should have been implemented (as should many other reports!), but it's less than clear to me that it would have made any difference. The experts would have passed that hurdle.
Thank you, Joshua. I have read and applaud your Gazette column. Laddish and crude as its content may be, Private Eye over recent editions had awakened serious doubts over the Letby case before McDonald’s press conferences. My very good friend and fellow campaigner Glyn Maddocks KC (Hons) from his recent media commentary seems to be on more or less the same page as yourself in his views concerning necessary reforms. On the evidence available to both the Crown and the defence, to the Judge and the jury this to my mind has nothing to do with removing juries from the equation which one government after another has hankered after and everything to do with reforms along the general lines which Sir Brian Leveson and now you identify. How can it be to do with the jury process with this and other potential and actual miscarriages when in good faith and -little doubt- conscientiousness they can appraise only that put before them. Glyn and I as I believe fully agree that once administrations of whichever persuasion, covering Blairite to Sunak, had wished to regard the CCRC as more or less past its “sell-by” date since they had “been there, done that-let’s move on” then it would be an underfunded, embarrassing entity, best shunted off into a siding. I tried to persuade political office holders of both principal parties to take an interest but to no avail. Living still and until recently practising as I do and did in Brum, I saw interest in that last resort body dwindle so that it was as though it had become the dotty relative in the attic who had grudgingly to be left there in peace. Underfunding led to part time working for its Chair, Chief Executive and staff, whom I find it unreasonable to blame since there must have been times when the Court of Appeal had given them a torrid time over referrals and governments had displayed apparent indifference where they had grown afraid of lifting their heads above the parapet. And now here the Commission is in line to be THE handy scapegoat for example in the Malkinson case. May it collectively have been at fault sometimes? Inquiry as we can hope may reveal. Is that body in any way remotely likely to have been the only one in such glaring cases to have defaulted? Of course NOT.
I think that is the nearest I have seen you write - to stunned silence. O God!