12 December 2011 by Guest Contributor
The European court of human rights is considering a challenge by the UK supreme court to its ban on hearsay evidence. On Thursday, the grand chamber of the European court of human rights will deliver a judgment that could mark a turning point in the UK’s relationship with the Strasbourg court.
On the face of it, the issue looks simple enough. One clue to its importance, though, is that we have had to wait more than 18 months for the court’s final appeal chamber to come up with a ruling. Perhaps the judges have found it a difficult decision to reach.
Traditionally, the English courts have not permitted hearsay evidence: a witness was not allowed to give evidence of what he heard someone say to him. That was because it was difficult for the jury to assess the value of an absent witness’s evidence. But English law now permits a number of exceptions in the interests of justice. These are not reflected in the wording of the human rights convention.
What the Strasbourg judges have been asked to decide is whether two defendants in unrelated cases received fair trials in the crown court. They were both convicted even though their lawyers had not been able to cross-examine witnesses who had given written evidence against them.
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8 December 2011 by Alasdair Henderson
R v. H & others [2011] EWCA Crim 2753 – read judgment.
One of the most popular ideas in crime fiction is the ‘cold case’; the apparently unsolved crime which, through various twists and turns, is brought to justice many years after it was committed. Indeed, at least two recent long-running TV dramas (the American show ‘Cold Case‘ and the more imaginatively and morbidly named British show ‘Waking the Dead‘) have been entirely based on this concept.
But what happens when such cases do turn up in real life, get to trial and the perpetrator is found guilty? In particular, how does a judge approach sentencing for a crime which might be decades-old, in the light of Article 7 ECHR? The Court of Appeal recently provided some answers to those questions.
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8 December 2011 by Adam Wagner
Top Judge yesterday
A lot of headlines begin with “Top judge…” at the moment. Top Judge has variously attacked MPs who reveal injunctions, expressed fears over cameras in court, warned legal aid in family cases may disappear, protested over legal aid reforms, urged murder law reforms and said Britain can ignore Europe on human rights (he didn’t, but that’s another story).
Aside from lazy sub-editors (one of whom was me), what is causing this proliferation of Top Judges? It may be that senior judges are speaking out more, even on controversial topics which could create problems for them in the future.
Or perhaps Top Judge has always been outspoken, but fewer people were listening. In the internet age judges’ pronouncements are more quickly and widely reported. Speeches are often published instantly (sometimes, even before being made) on websites such as judiciary.gov.uk. Previously obscure Parliamentary committee hearings are broadcast live on the internet. The increased profile of the still-new Supreme Court adds to this dynamic.
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7 December 2011 by David Hart KC
Leeds Group v. Leeds City Council et al [2011] EWCA Civ 1447
Retrospective legislation often gives rise to claims under Article 1 Protocol 1 of the Convention – you may have some legal advantage (whether it be property or a legal claim) which you then find yourselves losing as a result of the change of law. I have posted on some of these, the ban of the pub fag machine, or the change in the law that meant insurers had to pay compensation for pleural plaques caused by asbestos. These A1P1 cases are not easy to win, not least because the courts are wary in thwarting legislative changes via one of the less fundamental and most qualified rights in the Convention locker.
The Leeds Group case is a good example of this. The Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 (CROW) changed the basis on which town and village greens could be registered. Put very shortly, you can register some land as a green if people had “indulged” in “lawful sports and pastimes” on the land for not less than 20 years, in the rather quaint and de haut en bas language of the drafter. The changes under CROW were quite subtle. You now have to show a “significant number” so indulging, but these people can come from “any neighbourhood within a locality”, rather than from a “locality” – a term on which previously masses of ink has been split and by which otherwise meritorious claims for greens disallowed. And the sports and pastimes now had to continue to the date of registration – you and your fellow Morris dancers could not just stop dancing or whatever once you had done your 20 years, if you wanted to register the greens.
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6 December 2011 by Rosalind English
Behind the Times paywall Anthony Lester today declares that “Sniping at Strasbourg will only hinder reform”. In his guest column, he says that Court is suffering unfair criticism from “sections of the British media” and “politicians who accuse it of over-reaching its power”. That may well be the case, but the most searing and authoritative criticism comes not from politicians or the press but from Lord Lester’s own profession – see Jonathan Sumption QC’s recent broadside (and our post) and Lord Hoffmann’s much-discussed analysis (posted here).
If the Court is indeed hobbled by unfair squibs and arrows from a resentful sector of the British populace, as Lord Lester suggests, why is the prisoner votes example the only one he can come up with? That is an important fight, at least from a constitutional angle, but not the only flashpoint; the Court’s tendency to act as fourth instance appeal tribunal particularly on deportation and terrorism cases is arguably far more “dangerous” and certainly of concern to more people than votes for prisoners.
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5 December 2011 by David Hart KC
Mortgage Agency Services Number Four Limited v. Alomo Solicitors, HHJ Simon Brown QC, [2011] EWHC B22 (Mercantile)
Every so often, a judge gets so infuriated with the prolixity of an advocate that he has a real go at him in the resulting judgment, and this solicitors negligence case is a good example. However, this judge spiced up his reasoning with a tale of how long-winded advocates were treated in the past when their legal documents went on too long:
“One early remedy that had an effect was used by the Lord Keeper in England in 1596 in the case of Mylward v Weldon…[1595] EWHC Ch 1]. He ordered that a pleading 120 pages long be removed from the file because it was about eight times longer than it need have been. He ordered that the pleader be taken to the Fleet prison. His Lordship then ordered that on the next Saturday the Warden of the Fleet bring the pleader into Westminster Hall at 10 a.m. and then and there cut a hole in the midst of the pleading and place it over the pleader’s head so that it would hang over his shoulders with the written side outwards. The Warden had to lead the pleader around Westminster Hall while the three courts were sitting and display him “bare headed and bare faced” and then be returned to the Fleet prison until he had paid a £10 fine – a huge sum in those days.”
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5 December 2011 by Melina Padron
Welcome back to the human rights roundup. Our full list of links can be found here. You can also find our table of human rights cases here and previous roundups here.
by Melinda Padron
In the news
The Government’s Green Paper on secret evidence
In my previous roundup, I mentioned that the government had published a Green Paper which proposed the extension of “closed material procedures”. Last week, the blogger Obiter J wrote a three-part detailed piece about the Green Paper and its proposals, which you can read here and here. In our blog, Adam Wagner pondered whether more trials should be held in secret, whilst Angus McCullough QC expanded on Adam’s piece, offering his comment from the perspective of an experienced Special Advocate.
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1 December 2011 by Karwan Eskerie
Harvey v Director of Public Prosecutions [2011] EWHC Crim B1 – Read judgment
“What on earth was he thinking?” asks a Telegraph article bearing as its title another rhetorical question, “Would Judges like to be told to eff off in court?”. This is in reference to Mr Justice Bean’s judgment in Harvey v Director of Public Prosecutions in which he overturned Mr Harvey’s conviction under section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 for swearing at a police officer.
Alarmed at the corrosion of the rule of law and standards of public behaviour that the judgment propagates, the author of the article admonishes Bean J for ignoring the moral and social significance of “such insolent defiance” of the Police.
So, why such disapproval?
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1 December 2011 by Angus McCullough KC
This is an expanded version of a comment made on Adam Wagner’s post: Should more trials be held in secret?
Our recent post highlights the Government’s consultation on the Justice and Security Green Paper. Having been involved as a Special Advocate in many hearings involving closed material, I am troubled about these proposals, as well as the lack of public debate that they have generated.
The main proposals in the Green Paper are based on the highly debatable assumption that existing closed material procedures (CMPs as per the acronym adopted) have been shown to operate fairly and effectively. CMPs, were first introduced in 1997 and have escalated in their application since then. At §2.3 of the Green Paper it is stated that:
The contexts in which CMPs are already used have proved that they are capable of delivering procedural fairness. The effectiveness of the Special Advocate system is central to this … .
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1 December 2011 by Adam Wagner
There is just over a month left to respond to the Government’s consultation on the Justice and Security Green Paper. Responses have to be be sent via email or post by Friday 6 January 2012.
The proposals have been little reported, save for journalist Joshua Rozenberg, channeling Dinah Rose QC, warning that they will “undermine a fundamental constitutional right:”. Perhaps legal correspondents prefer to pick over testimony from the glamorous Leveson Inquiry as opposed to complicated government proposals involving clunky phrases – some would say fig leaves – like “Closed Material Procedure” and “Special Advocate”.
But these proposals are extremely important. If they become law, which is likely given the lack of opposition from any of the main parties, the justice system will look very different in the coming years. Many civil hearings could be held in secret, and although (as the Government argues anyway) more justice may be done, undoubtedly less will be seen to be done.
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30 November 2011 by David Hart KC
Modaresi v. Secretary of State for Health & others [2011] EWCA Civ 1359, Court of Appeal
Any lawyer dealing with civil or criminal cases tends to think that, if there is a time limit for doing something in the case, then if that thing does not get done on time, the court may be lenient if there is good reason for extending time. The problem comes where the court is only given power to hear an appeal by a specific set of rules, and the rules say, for instance: you must appeal within 14 days of the decision. In the statutory context, that may mean precisely what it says. And the court, however sympathetically inclined, cannot do otherwise and allow a late appeal.
We see this from this mental health case. Ms Modaresi, who suffers from schizophrenia, was admitted to hospital on 20 December 2010 for assessment under section 2 of the Mental Health Act. Section 66 of the Act provides that where a patient is admitted to hospital in this way, “an application may be made to [the tribunal] within the relevant period” by the patient, and “the relevant period” means “14 days beginning with the day on which the patient is admitted”.
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28 November 2011 by Graeme Hall
Welcome back to the human rights roundup. Our full list of links can be found here. You can also find our table of human rights cases here and previous roundups here.
by Graeme Hall
In the news
Phone-hacking
The Leveson Inquiry has had a star-studded parade of witnesses and phone hacking has dominated the headlines. This week’s highlights have been comprehensively covered by Inforrm’s Blog here, here and here.
David Allen Green, writing in the New Statesman, remarks that this Inquiry is a boost for democracy as it gives a voice to those who have been at the sharp end of press intrusion – normally all to easily ignored and silenced by papers. Freedom of expression, at least during the Inquiry, is not just the preserve of the press.
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25 November 2011 by Rosalind English
Ironically, during the week when South Africa’s notorious “Secrecy Bill” was making its speedy way through parliament, Helen Zille, Leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance party in South Africa, struck a blow for freedom of expression by tackling one of the most sensitive subjects on the Southern Africa agenda – Aids.
In short, Zille has created a storm in the Twittersphere and many other places besides by questioning the softly-softly culturally sensitive approach to Aids prevention in South Africa and contrasting it with the greater emphasis placed on individual responsibility in other countries.
In her her piece in the Cape Times she points out that in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand, deliberate infection of others with HIV is an imprisonable crime. Far from being a violation of HIV sufferers’ rights, she notes the high proportion of Council of Europe countries which have criminalised people for having unprotected sex, knowing they were HIV-positive, without disclosing their status. To us there is nothing controversial about these measures.
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25 November 2011 by Adam Wagner
I had intended to entitle this post “Bratza goes ballistic” which would, for reasons I will explain, have been unfair. However, as reported by guardian.co.uk, the new British president of the European Court of Human Rights has pushed back strongly against the “vitriolic and – I am afraid to say, xenophobic – fury” of the reaction to recent rulings by the UK government and press, which he says is “unprecedented in my experience, as someone who has been involved with the Convention system for over 40 years.”
Safe to say, if anyone in the UK Government had been expecting an easy ride from the new, British born, president of the court, they will be disappointed by Bratza’s article in the European Human Rights Law Review. However, reading beyond the incendiary first few paragraphs, Bratza ends in a more conciliatory fashion, accepting many of the criticisms of the court and indeed offering suggestions for change.
I cannot link to the full text of The relationship between the UK courts and Strasbourg as it is only available on Westlaw, but I will quote some of the choice paragraphs.
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24 November 2011 by Rosalind English
Jude and others (Respondents) v Her Majesty’s Advocate (Scotand) [2011] UKSC 55 – read judgment; McGowan (Procurator Fiscal, Edinburgh) (Appellant) v B (Respondent) [2011] UKSC 54 – read judgment
In these two cases the Supreme Court has considered whether the failure to take up on legal representation during police interview amounted to a waiver of the right of access to legal advice for the purposes of determining whether the trial had been fair.
Both cases involved detention of individuals which had taken place prior to the decision of this Court in Cadder v Her Majesty’s Advocate [2010] UKSC 43 (see our post) and they did not have access to legal advice either before or during their police interviews. In the course of their interviews, they each made statements which were later relied on by the Crown at their trials.
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The European court of human rights is considering a challenge by the UK supreme court to its ban on hearsay evidence. On Thursday, the grand chamber of the European court of human rights will deliver a judgment that could mark a turning point in the UK’s relationship with the Strasbourg court. 
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