During interviews he is denied fluids and a break to consult with the solicitor and this also is on the tape and is, it would seem, acceptable. At one point his mouth was so dry he could hardly open it. The interview room was small and decidedly claustrophobic and very hot.
The man is kept in a cell and here also questions must be raised regarding the dangers inherent in enforced and threatening solitude even if just overnight. The cell is cold, has only a mattress to sleep on and a high window where daylight is obscured by what looks like plastic panels of some sort. The man has to remove his belt and shoes and the sad thing in many ways is it not being acknowledged that these silly requirements do nothing at all to obscure the suicidal intention in a person’s mind. There was a point when the man was banging his head against the wall in extreme mental distress and nobody intervened at all. This is the real state of things.
The final sentence was, as mentioned earlier, a period of unpaid work in the community. This is what used to be termed ‘Community Service’ then ‘Community Punishment’ and the last I heard ‘Community Payback’ and no doubt in due time it will be called something else but, whatever the terminology one question it immediately begs is “Who are the real criminals?” and another perhaps could be “Who owes what to who?” Community Service orders were originally, projected in the 1970 Wotton Report. Then, the 1972 Criminal Justice Act was to introduce imposed community service into Britain as an experimental penal measure although it had, in a variety of forms, already operated in America and, how often do we see England following America in a way similar to a dog on a lead following it’s master or a restrained, compliant offender (against humanity) attached to and meekly following the global policeman and being obedient to his every whim? Countless lives have been lost as a result.
The man’s solicitor tells him that from his experience which is in excess of twenty five years he has learned that magistrates courts (and indeed crown courts) “don’t like defence solicitors” and he advised that due to the heavy toll all this had taken on my then delicate state of health a toll from which I have yet to fully recover) he advised not to question anything. As the reader has no doubt gathered “the man” was me.
During the whole period of tension I was actually re-arrested again on a trumped up, unverified charge relating to violation of police bail. This led to another night in police custody and that charge itself never even got to court and the prosecutor actually apologised to the defence for the bad and unfair handling of the situation by the police. Both I and the custody staff at Brighton Magistrates Court heard this and shared a wry grin together. At least that custody staffs at Brighton Magistrates Court were decent people and were kind to me and I gladly acknowledge that now. At that time I had been snatched from the house by the police and had no money and fortunately the barrister who stood in for the solicitor gave me the single fair home.
Later I was to learn that two stated key requirements for becoming a magistrate are “being of good character” and “social awareness.” Yet, I submit these traits are in short supply anywhere in the judicial system and there is reason to suspect that they probably always have been.
On page seventeen of the book Offending Women by former probation officer Ann Worrall the following case is described and illustrates how far removed from humanity a magistrate, in love with power as they are, so often is.
The case concerns Sheila Kent who was actually sent to prison for four months for failing to honour small monthly fine levied for a motoring offence as well as not being in possession of a television licence. No notice was taken of the delay in receiving her child benefit allowance being significantly contributory to her being unable to continue paying the fine.
The following day the same magistrate, Sheila Bannister gave Michael Hardstaff a twenty eight day suspended sentence for an almost identical offence and Hardstaff himself, apparently, admitted he had for some reason unknown to himself been treated more leniently than Sheila Kent. Given this common state of affairs surely calls into question a claim made by a female magistrate in Worrall’s book, namely, “I like to think that we use our common sense.”
Interestingly, the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice has not considered the magistrates courts to be a source of potential injustice. Without ever troubling to commission any kind of research into the conduct and out comings of these courts of summary “justice” they have declared simply that the magistrates “should” be trusted to deal with cases properly and fairly as they actually deal with, incredibly, over ninety three percent of all criminal business in the courts. Yet, on what ground may they be afforded this trust? And the word “should” logically admits to the possibility of doubt. There is a significant difference surely between ‘should’ and ‘can.’ This difference has obvious moral dimensions and we may wonder why it has not been explored more fully my own concern would again point to the shallow thinking as well as blatant corruption that is allowed to proliferate within the judicial system as a whole.
We must note however that, particularly in magistrates courts, the prosecution of defendants relies heavily on evidence that the police provide and they are always keen to secure convictions for those charged and this, I unhesitatingly repeat is at the expense of truth and integrity. Magistrates are disposed to believe and rely on the police and their evidence and can be easily manipulated by articulate prosecuting counsel often also by the clerk of the court, the so called “learned clerk” who, I have recently learned, is seldom if ever actually a qualified solicitor and this contrary to widely accepted opinion.
Interestingly, a broadsheet published in 1584 entitled ‘A Mirror for Magistrates of Cities’ takes into account the suspected sheltered lives of those office holders and informs them that a young man might part with ‘forty shillings or better’ in ‘some blind (i.e. obscure) brothel house about the suburbs’ for the enjoyment of ‘a bottle or two of wine, the embracement of a painted strumpet and the French welcome (pox).’
It is certainly a struggle for defence lawyers to persuade magistrates to question or doubt police evidence and the manner in which it is often obtained. This is an unfortunate truth of my own experience as well as that of many others.
The functioning of the courts does need to be questioned. It is perhaps good to wonder why Judges in England and Wales wear wigs at all. One source suggests that this relates to hoping to appear impersonal and impartial in their administration of justice yet history is replete with examples that question this. There have been at least two Lord Chief Justices who have not favoured the wearing of wigs one being Lord Taylor who had little good to say of them and Lord Denham who called them “..the silliest things in England.”
In his article in ‘The Guardian on 7th February 2004 Ludovic Kennedy argues that” The judicial ethos in this country is prosecution minded and yet we may wonder if the ‘not proven’ verdict is a fairer statement than not guilty. Kennedy observes that ‘not guilty’ does not necessarily guarantee innocence as in a case handled by‘the late Norman Birkett, whose client in the Brighton trunk murder case before the war was acquitted, yet who after the war admitted his guilt.
Yet, critics of the ‘not proven’ verdict which is often used in Scottish courts argue that it leaves a feeling of doubt in the public mind. Perhaps one of the issues that this argument raises is what is meant by ‘the public’ – I suspect this is a ruling class/establishment argument as it fails to acknowledge that the public are a class divided accumulation of people where expectations and experiences of the judicial system may well differ a very great deal.