Search Results for: prisoners/page/20/ministers have been procrastinating on the issue, fearing that it will prove unpopular with the electorate.

Luck, human rights and the lottery winning rapist

27 April 2011 by Adam Wagner

Iorworth HOARE v the United Kingdom – 16261/08 [2011] ECHR 722 (12 April 2011) – Read decision

Potential future US president Donald Trump once said that “Everything in life is luck“. Sometimes a case arises from such an unlikely factual scenario that it raises questions about the relationship between justice, fairness and luck. This is such a case.

Iorworth Hoare was convicted 1989 for attempted rape. He was a serial sex offender, so was sentenced to life imprisonment. As life in prison does not usually mean actual life in prison, he was released on 31 March 2005. In what could be considered a not quite minor reversal of Hoare’s deservedly poor fortune up to that point, in 2004, while on day release, he bought a National Lottery ticket, and won £7m. Home Office rules allowed prisoners in open conditions to play the lottery.

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Ethics on the bench and in the witness box: The Round-up

16 March 2016 by acwessely

Photo credit: Guardian

This week’s round up comes from Alex Wessely.

In the news

A highly experienced magistrate – Richard Page – has been sacked for airing views opposing same-sex couples being allowed to adopt.  In a statement the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office said his views – which he had expressed in an BBC interview in 2015 – constituted “serious misconduct which brought the magistracy into disrepute”. Alice Arnold in the Guardian agrees with the decision to sack him (“the law is clear… magistrates must respect it”), whereas the Christian Legal Centre say this represents a “new political orthodoxy” and “modern day madness”. In a subsequent development, Mr Page is now planning to sue Michael Gove, citing religious discrimination.
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Key Justice and Security Bill resources

29 May 2012 by Adam Wagner

The Justice and Security Bill, which proposes to introduce secret ‘Closed Material Procedure’ (CMP) hearings into civil trials, has been published. Here are some useful resources for picking your way through the controversy:

• The Bill can be found here in ‘clickable content’ format, and here as a single PDF document. You can watch the Bill wind its way through Parliament from here.

• The Ministry of Justice’s page on the Bill, including some ‘myth-busting’ (including ‘This is undermining the centuries old legal tradition’) is here.

• 84 responses to the Green Paper which led to this bill can be found here, and the Government’s response of 29 May is here.

• The Joint Committee on Human Rights’ highly critical report on the proposals is here.

• My post from last week on the key concessions made by the Government since the Green Paper is here. I commented that despite the removal of inquests from scope and the trigger for CMPs changing from “public interest” to “national security”, the key criticisms of the bill remain.

• You can access all of the UK Human Rights Blog coverage of the secret trials proposals here, including our exclusive on the Special Advocates’ opposition to the proposals, which became the most damaging aspect of the case against the Green Paper.

• Some press coverage: Government scraps ‘secret inquests’ plan (BBC), Climbdown on secret justice: Victory for the Mail’s campaign as Clarke says inquests WON’T be held behind closed doors (Daily Mail), Secret courts plan: it’s still justice in the dark (Guardian), Clarke listens to Daily Mail on secret justice proposals (Press Gazette)

• The University of Reading’s excellent resources page from its Law, Terrorism and the Right to Know team

More to come on the proposals soon…

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A blueprint for a simpler, fairer justice system

11 November 2011 by Adam Wagner

The Civil Justice Council (CJC) has just released a major new report: Access to Justice for Litigants in Person (or self-represented litigants). The report attacks head-on the prospect of thousands more people having to represent themselves in court once civl legal aid is mostly taken away.

The 94-page report, written by a group including a QC and a High Court judge, is a major and ambitious attempt to make the justice system fairer and simpler for people who go to court without a lawyer. A huge amount of research and thought has gone into it, building on the process begun by Lord Woolf in 1997 with the Civil Procedure Act. The CJC was itself a creation of the 1997 Act, its function being to figure out how to make the civil justice system more accessible, fair and efficient.

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Is the New Zealand Parliament about to drop commitment to the rule of law?

31 March 2015 by Guest Contributor

The New Zealand Parliament seems about to drop that country’s commitment to the rule of law from the Act underpinning the judicial branch. Retiring Supreme Court judge (and former Solicitor-General) Sir John McGrath thinks that’s worrying. He’s right. There’s still time for ex-pat Kiwis to lobby the Minister of Justice.

One of the first legislative measures of the young South Pacific colony, back in 1841, drafted in part by the Birmingham born first Chief Justice, Sir William Martin, was the creation of what is now known as the High Court of New Zealand.

That legislation has been updated over the years, significantly in the 1880s before consolidation in 1908 in the Judicature Act. That Act was overseen by the country’s fourth Chief Justice, the remarkable, Shetland born, Sir Robert Stout.
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Leveson goes live

14 November 2011 by Adam Wagner

Updated |Today marks a minor landmark for open justice. For the first time, a public inquiry is being  shown live over the internet.

The Leveson Inquiry into Culture, Practices and Ethics of the Press has taken over Court 73 in the Royal Courts of Justice, so when Counsel to the Inquiry Robert Jay QC begins his cross examination, you could even imagine you are watching a live trial – on that note, watch this space.

The Iraq (Chilcott) Inquiry was broadcast live but it was not a public inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005, as Leveson’s is. The Inquiry’s website has been relaunched and will be hosting the live stream of hearings on this page. My only grumbles about the new website are that the live coverage should be more prominently advertised on the main page.

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Gay marriage on the way… but not quite yet

10 October 2011 by Adam Wagner

In his Conservative Party Conference speech the Prime Minister David Cameron signalled his strong support for the legalisation of gay marriage. He said:

Conservatives believe in the ties that bind us; that society is stronger when we make vows to each other and support each other. So I don’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I’m a Conservative.

We have covered the slow progress towards legalised gay marriage in a number of posts since this blog launched in March 2010: see the links below. Where are we up to now?

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It’s a fair cop: Supreme Court clarifies scope of duties of care owed by police

12 February 2018 by Isabel McArdle

Robinson (Appellant) v Chief Constable of the West Yorkshire Police (Respondent) [2018] UKSC 4

Update – Isabel McArdle talks to Rosalind English about this case in the latest episode from Law Pod UK, available for free download from iTunes and Audioboom (episode 23).

The Supreme Court has made a significant decision on the question of the scope of the common law duty of care owed by police when their activities lead to injuries being sustained by members of the public. It has long been the case that a claim cannot be brought in negligence against the police, where the danger is created by someone else, except in certain unusual circumstances such as where there has been an assumption of responsibility.

This case, however, was focussed on the question of injuries resulting from activities of the police, where the danger was created by their own conduct. The answer is that the police did owe a duty of care to avoid causing an injury to a member of the public in those circumstances.

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Book Review – Marshall Hall: A Law Unto Himself by Sally Smith

2 July 2016 by Guest Contributor

Owain Thomas QC reviews this new book by 1 Crown Office Row’s own Sally Smith QC.

Sally Smith’s wonderful new biography of the great Edwardian advocate Edward Marshall Hall is the first reappraisal of his life and career since the celebrated biography by Marjoribanks, published only two years after his death. Since then the worlds of law, journalism, celebrity, and crime have become intertwined in so many complex ways, but Smith charts in this book the quite remarkable public life of the era’s most sought after barrister. He attained celebrity beyond the dreams of even the most fervent publicity hungry barrister. His cases were regularly front page news. Because of the deliciously lurid subject matter some might have got there anyway, but his name added a lustre and whetted the public appetite for the scandal to come with the promise of a coup de théâtre. Thousands waited for the verdicts outside the Old Bailey.
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Legal Challenge to Lockdown

27 May 2020 by Rosalind English

Philip Havers QC of 1 Crown Office Row will be leading a challenge to the lockdown measures adopted by the government in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Too little too late as Daily Mail “corrects” bogus human rights splash

12 November 2013 by Adam Wagner

The Daily Mail has belatedly “corrected” its front page story on human rights damages, over a month after it appeared on 7 October 2013. Early last month I blogged on  the original bogus article, which was so poor it generated a response from the ordinarily placid Council of Europe.

I have quote-pincered “corrected” as despite the newspaper’s actions, the damage is already done. A month has passed, which in social media time might as well be million years. People have moved on. Another human rights myth is implanted in the collective consciousness, and no sad little correction is going to dislodge a front page headline.

And to make things worse, the story was amplified by a whole host of other newspapers which picked it up without bothering to check the facts, including the Telegraph (corrected) and Daily Star (as yet uncorrected).

What really rankles about this story is how wrong it was.

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Defendants no longer required to state nationality at the start of criminal cases

9 February 2021 by Samuel March

On 8 February 2020, small but significant changes were made to the Part 3 (Case Management) of the Criminal Procedure Rules and Practice Directions 2020 (“CrimPR”).  These changes remove the requirement that defendants in criminal trials provide their nationality to the court at preliminary hearings. The question is now to be asked only where a court passes an immediate or suspended custodial sentence.

Family courts guide to Media Access & Reporting

29 July 2011 by Adam Wagner

Updated | The family courts in conjunction with the Judicial College and the Society of Editors have has published a Guide to Media Access and Reporting. It has been written by two barristers, Adam Wolanski and Kate Wilson.

It seeks to address “the tension between concerns about “secret justice” and legitimate expectations of privacy and confidentiality for the family (update – read Lucy Series’ analysis with a focus on Court of Protection cases).

This is interesting and, on a quick glance through the detailed document, useful. Family judges have been critical of journalists’ reporting of sensitive cases recently, and this guide is clearly an attempt to guide judges on what can and can not be reported, and journalists on how to report responsibly. The guide would benefit from a contents page and executive summary, but aside from that it will no doubt prove useful to practitioners and journalists.

One line I am predictably fond of: “Although it remains a matter for the judge, senior members of the judiciary have encouraged the making of public judgments”

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Ask and you shall receive – finally, an English translation of the Rachel Corrie judgment

18 October 2012 by Adam Wagner

Last month I posted on the troubling case of Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old protester killed by an Israeli military bulldozer in 2003. In August, an Israeli court ruled that the Israeli Defence Ministry bore no responsibility in civil law for her death.

I complained that the reporting of the ruling had been poor, despite a reasonably good summary in English produced by the court. One of the main problems undoubtedly was the lack of an English translation of the 73-page Hebrew ruling. Until now, that is. Through the magic of the internet – and a huge amount of work – Irène Solomon, a legal advisor at Ofgem and reader of this blog, has translated the judgment from Hebrew into English. She has taken on this mammoth task for free in her personal capacity and has given me permission to publish her work online as a UKHRB exclusive.

You can download the translation here (PDF) and it is also reproduced after the break below. I should emphasise that this is not an official translation, but it does appear to me to be a very good effort indeed.

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What’s all the fuss about the Lord’s prayer? Emma-Louise Fenelon

30 November 2015 by Guest Contributor

“I find your lack of faith disturbing” (Darth Vader)

Digital Cinema Media (DCM), the media agency that supplies adverts to 80% of UK cinemas caused consternation last week when it announced its refusal to show a 60-second advert by the Church of England encouraging people to pray. The ad would have been guaranteed a sizable audience had it been permitted to air as planned before the upcoming Star Wars: the Force Awakens, advance ticket sales for which have broken all known records.

DCM said the decision was based on concerns that the ad risked upsetting or offending audiences and ran contrary to their policy not to show ads that in “the reasonable opinion of DCM constitute Political or Religious Advertising.”

David Cameron, Richard Dawkins, Carrie Fisher and Stephen Fry were among the chorus of voices to lambast the decision. Jim Shannon, Democratic Unionist MP put down an early day motion for debate in the House of Commons urging for “the ban be reconsidered and overturned”. The motion is currently supported by the signatures of 14 MPs.
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