Category: Criminal
7 January 2011 by Rosalind English
[Updated] In the spirit of our coverage of environmental activism in one form or another, here is the website strapline for the Campaign for Real Farming, which sets out to
achieve nothing less than the people’s takeover of the food supply
Some of the initiatives for that takeover were being aired at the CRF’s “fringe” farming conference which took place in Oxford this week, voicing polite but forceful protest against the high production objectives of the mainstream Farming Conference in the Examination Schools next door.
According to CRF founder Colin Tudge, if we are serious about feeding 9 bn people in a few decades’ time, the current food production system, which is designed to make money, has to be dismantled in favour of small scale, labour intensive farming, which is designed to feed people. Like any reform movement, this “agrarian renaissance” is about wresting power away from existing authorities and it has set its sights on, amongst other things, the constellation of laws and regulations governing the cultivation of food.
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29 December 2010 by Adam Wagner
Al Hassan-Daniel & Anor v HM Revenue and Customs & Anor [2010] EWCA Civ 1443 (15 December 2010) – Read judgment
The Court of Appeal has ruled that the family of a drug smuggler who died after being poisoned by 116 swallowed cocaine packages can bring a human rights claim against the state, despite his criminal behaviour.
The decision will anger those who say that the Human Rights Act is no more than a villains’ charter, doing more to protect the rights of “asylum seeker death drivers” and the murderers of headmasters. However, the court has done no more than confirm the basic principle that human rights are for all, not just for people we like.
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24 December 2010 by Isabel McArdle
Stellato v Ministry of Justice [2010] EWCA Civ 1435 – Read judgment
The court of appeal has ruled that when a court set a deadline for a prisoner’s release, that deadline could was not lawfully extended simply because a court needed time to hear an appeal against the decision to release him.
In other words, prisoners must be released on time unless a court explicitly rules otherwise. Absent such a ruling, any additional time spent in custody waiting for a hearing will be unlawful detention and could trigger damages.
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21 December 2010 by Matthew Flinn
R (on the application of Daniel Faulkner) v Secretary of State for Justice and Anor [2010] EWCA Civ 1434 – Read Judgment
The Court of Appeal has upheld the appeal of prisoner who spent 10 more months in prison than he should have, due to unjustified delay in having his case heard by the Parole Board. The court found that there had been an infringement of his rights under Article 5(4) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
In 2001 Daniel Faulkner was convicted of causing grievous bodily harm with intent (an offence under section 18 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861). As this was his second offence of this nature, he was sentenced to custody for life, with the minimum period he had to spend in custody being set at two years, eight and a half months. That period expired on 18th April 2004 and he became eligible for parole.
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15 December 2010 by Caroline Cross
PF and EF v UK (Application No. 28326/09) – Read judgment
The European Court of Human Rights has dismissed an application brought against the police in Northern Ireland by a mother and her daughter who argued the police had failed to take sufficient action to protect them from loyalist riots on their route to primary school.
The court held that the police must be afforded a degree of discretion in taking operational decisions, and that in this case the police took all “reasonable steps” to protect the applicants.
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14 December 2010 by Maria Roche
R v Khan [2010] EWCA Crim 2880 – Read judgment
The Court of Appeal has increased the sentences of two human traffickers from 3 to 4 years and upheld the 3 year sentence of a third trafficker (despite her mental health problems) for systematic and well-planned exploitation of trafficked restaurant workers.
The offenders, Shahnawaz Ali Khan, Raza Ali Khan and their mother Perveen Khan, were family restaurateurs in Harrogate. Over a period of four years they recruited nine men from the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent to work in the restaurant. All the workers entered the country legally on non-EEA work permits, after the offenders made assurances of good pay and working conditions to both the workers and the Home Office.
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7 December 2010 by Adam Wagner
The arrest of Wikileaks chief Julian Assange has meant that the Ministry of Justice’s “radical” reform program for the criminal justice system has received less attention then it might otherwise have.
Although clearly accidental, the timing may suit the justice secretary, who has received criticism from within his own party in relation to his plans to send thousands fewer offenders to jail in the coming years. The MoJ have said:
The green paper on sentencing and rehabilitation sets out plans to break the destructive cycle of crime and prison by ensuring that jails become places of hard work, that rehabilitation programmes are opened up to innovation from the private and charitable sectors, paid by results, and that the priority will now be to reduce the reoffending by people after they have been punished.
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2 December 2010 by Adam Wagner
Cromwell looks on
Chaytor & Ors, R v (Rev 2) [2010] UKSC 52 (01 December 2010) – Read judgment
Updated | The Supreme Court has dismissed the appeal of four men accused of fiddling their Parliamentary expenses. In doing so, it has provided a powerful statement of the limits of Parliamentary privilege against court interference, and of its own powers in our separation of powers system.
The background to the case is set out in my post on the Court of Appeal case. The basic summary is that three ex-MPs, Morley, Chaytor and Devine, and one member of the House of Lords, Lord Hanningfield, are charged with false accounting relating to their parliamentary expenses claims.
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2 December 2010 by Rosalind English
R (on the application of Zagorski and Baze) v Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and Archimedes Pharma UK Ltd – read judgment
The Administrative Court has put down a marker on the potential applicability of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights about the morality of certain trade with the United States. The case concerned the export of Sodium Thiopental, an anaesthetic drug that is used as a preliminary to the lethal injection for prisoners on death row. This is the first time a domestic court has made a definitive ruling on the potential role of the EU Charter in domestic law. Earlier this year the Court of Appeal referred a question on the Charter to the ECJ for determination on its relevance to asylum proceedings: see R (S) v Home Secretary & (1) Amnesty International & AIRE Centre (2) UNHCR and our post on the subject.
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2 December 2010 by Matthew Flinn
In January of this year Paul Chambers used Twitter to express his feelings about the possible closure of Robin Hood Airport due to snow, which he feared would thwart his trip to Belfast to meet his new girlfriend, a fellow twitterer going by the name @Crazycolours.
He said via his @pauljchambers Twitter account:
Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!
The consequences of his tweet were summarised in the Guardian:
A week later, he was arrested at work by five police officers, questioned for eight hours, had his computers and phones seized and was subsequently charged and convicted of causing a “menace” under the Communications Act 2003 .
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26 November 2010 by Rosalind English
MA (Somalia) (Respondent) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Appellant) [2010] UKSC 49 – read judgment (press summary in earlier post)
The Supreme Court has ruled that where the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal (AIT) had directed itself correctly as to the impact of an asylum seeker’s lies on his claim, the Court of Appeal should have been very slow to find that it had gone on to apply that direction incorrectly.
This case brings to the fore the very difficult task facing immigration judges trying to determine the veracity of claimants’ testimony in asylum cases. The Supreme Court declined to express a conclusive view on the standard of proof in this area, a point which was acknowledged to be “both difficult and important”. It was left for an authoritative decision by that Court – but when such an occasion arise? The importance of settling this point cannot be overstated.
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25 November 2010 by Rosalind English
MA (Somalia) (Respondent) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Appellant) [2010] UKSC 49. Read judgment
Update, 26 November – Rosalind English’s case comment is here
The following report is based on the press summary provided by the Supreme Court.
The issues raised in this appeal were: (1) the correct approach to the relevance of lies told by an asylum seeker in the assessment of real risk of persecution on return to his or her country of origin; and (2) how far it is legitimate for an appeal court to interfere with the assessment of facts made by a specialist tribunal on the grounds of error of law.
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15 November 2010 by Adam Wagner
Updated x 2 | The lord chancellor Ken Clarke has announced plans for significant cuts to the legal aid system, which provides funding for legal representation to those who otherwise cannot afford it. The plans were largely as expected and will be open to consultation.
Update: The MoJ has published full details of the plans:
- The main documents, including impact assessments are here
- The proposals can be downloaded here
- Views on the consultation can be submitted online here
- A summary of the plans can be found here.
- The consultation on proposals for reform for civl litigation funding (the Jackson review) is here.
The scale of the cuts is expected to be around £350m out of the £2.2bm budget, which is just over 15%. Some of the plans had been leaked with partial accuracy by the Sunday Telegraph.
Update x 2: Read a summary of the reaction to the cuts here and an analysis of the underlying rational here.
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10 November 2010 by Rosalind English
Robert Elwyn Watkins v Philip James Woolas [2010] EWHC 2702 (QB) 5 November 2010- read judgment
Update – read our 3 December 2010 post on his defeat in the administrative court
The Election Court has ruled that the Labour MP for Oldham knowingly and deliberately misled the constituency and as a result his election is void under Section 106 of the Representation of the People Act (1983). Permission for judicial review of the decision has been refused.
The provision of the 1983 Act makes it an offence for anyone to publish “any false statement of fact in relation to the candidate’s personal character or conduct” to prevent them being elected “unless he can show that he had reasonable grounds for believing, and did believe, that statement to be true”.
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1 November 2010 by Matthew Hill
R v M(L) and others [2010] EWCA Crim 2327; [2010] WLR(D) 266 – Read judgment
The Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) has provided further guidance to prosecutors on whether or not they should bring charges against victims of human trafficking who go on to commit crimes. In the same judgment, the Court considered the extent of the obligation on the police to refer such victims to specialist agencies.
The state has a number of duties to victims of human trafficking deriving from the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (CETS No 197).
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[Updated] In the spirit of our coverage of environmental activism in one form or another, here is the website strapline for the Campaign for Real Farming, which sets out to 
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