I started out as a reporter covering the criminal and civil courts in Ohio. I got to read every piece of paper filed with the clerk’s office, a bottomless source of stories. These were the days when people still trusted reporters and talked to us. I hung out with the prosecutors and cops, and wandered in and out of the judges’ chambers.
It horrifies English lawyers when I suggest there is merit in electing judges rather than allowing them to be appointed by the diversity-obsessed Judicial Appointments Commission
After the closing gavel, judges, prosecutors, defence lawyers and we reporters would assemble in chief judge Kessler’s chambers for a whiskey. He kept a spittoon by his desk, a cigar in his jaws and hens at his farm. They produced green eggs, which he would gift to his cronies.
In 39 American states, voters got to know the measure of those putting themselves forward for judicial office. Because we, the reporters, told them. And they rendered their decision at the ballot box. In my corner of Ohio, it worked pretty well.
It horrifies English lawyers when I suggest there is merit in electing judges rather than allowing them to be appointed by the diversity-obsessed Judicial Appointments Commission, a gift from Tony Blair. The idea that the courts should be transparent is anathema. British reporters don’t hang around with judges, can’t rummage through the dockets and the judges carry on judging with no accountability to voters or anyone else.
I reflect on this trying to understand how the British legal system, once touted as the envy of the world, has been able to produce a miscarriage of justice as grotesque as the Lucy Connolly case in Birmingham. I have been especially curious about the judge who sentenced Lucy Connolly, who celebrated her 42nd birthday in prison in January, for her social media posting during the disturbances following the murder of three girls at a dance class.
Mrs Connolly was sentenced to 31 months in prison for publishing a post that supposedly stirred up racial hatred, but it was ambiguous, seen by few and quickly taken down by Connolly herself. The sentence was handed down at Birmingham Crown Court on October 17, 2024, following her guilty plea, which seems to have been extorted when she was warned that she could remain on remand for months, if the case was to go to trial.
The sentence was imposed by Melbourne Inman KC, apparently aged 68, the Recorder of Birmingham, apparently a bigwig at a provincial chambers before his elevation to the bench. Details are scarce. I have consulted 24 sources for this article and can find nothing substantial whatsoever about this judge, his legal scholarship, not even where he was born.
As Laurie Wastell reported here, three days into the disorder, ‘the Prime Minister told the country that the unrest we were seeing was the work of ‘gang[s] of thugs’ who had travelled to ‘a community that is not their own’ to smash it up; ‘far-right thugs’ would become his mantra. He also said the violence was “clearly whipped up online”, prompting a fierce crackdown on online speech.’ Keir Starmer was whipping up the police, Crown Prosecution Service and courts to hysteria, demanding convictions. And none of it was true.
Here, perhaps, is where one might expect the exercise of judicial temperament from a senior circuit judge. Judge Inman disappointed. He parroted the prime minister’s talking points. And the judicial hierarchy above him also disappoints. Lucy Connolly is appealing her sentence today, but as of today, she remains in prison.
Is this the two-tier justice that our politicians deny? Judge for yourself. In an earlier case I have discovered, Judge Inman sentenced one Antonio Boparan, who pleaded guilty to causing death by dangerous driving after killing a young girl. Boparan received an 18-month sentence and served fewer than nine months. Less than Connolly.
The judge told Lucy Connolly, who had repented for her mistake, and who is a woman with no criminal record and a challenging family life: ‘Sentences for those who incite racial hatred and disharmony in our society are intended to both punish and deter.’
Not, so, apparently for those who kill children.
Perhaps in Birmingham, Judge Inman might nevertheless be elected, were there to be elections. He certainly played to the gallery, coming down like a ton of bricks on a white working class woman who remains incarcerated, to the shame of British justice.
Who is this judge? At least we might know more about him, and would do, if he were forced to account for himself before voters. He’s a man who seems to have risen without trace.
The Judicial Appointments Commission which examines all candidatures in secret was introduced by Tony Blair’s government in 2005, replacing an equally obscure but perhaps more effective system of appointments by the Lord Chancellor, after ‘soundings’. It was one of the great constitutional reforms, credited to the influence of Blair’s barrister wife, Cherie.
We know a lot about the long march on such institutions as schools, universities, the police, civil service. Rather less about the transformation of the judiciary, or the machinations of legal process, where we are allowed to know virtually nothing at all. The reporters are kept out. Transcripts are unavailable. The qualifications of judges secret.
It’s time for some order in the court.
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