Matthew Scott is a criminal barrister at Pump Court Chambers
In 1894 Maria Hermann, an Austrian-born prostitute stood trial at the Old Bailey for the murder of a client. The evidence seemed overwhelming and she faced a death sentence if convicted. But she had the remarkable good fortune to be defended by Edward Marshall Hall, the greatest criminal advocate of the day. He produced evidence
On Monday, the HM Crown Prosecution Inspectorate (HMCPSI) released a report on the CPS’s actions in the case of Valdo Calocane. In June last year, Calocane killed students Grace O’Malley-Kumar, Barnaby Webber and school caretaker Ian Coates, and attempted to kill three other people, in a rampage of terrible violence in Nottingham. No reasonable jury
Until a few years ago I had never heard of a single case of a murderer declining to go into the dock to hear their sentence. I doubt whether any of them even realised that they had the choice. Yet in recent years, the word seems to have spread and something of a fashion has
It has been announced that ‘Opertion Soteria’ is to be extended from five pilot areas to every police force in the country. Operation Soteria is the name given to a supposedly new method of investigating rape and other serious sexual allegations. A report into the results of the Soteria pilots, written by the academics who were largely responsible for devising Operation Soteria in the
A group of 120 ‘top lawyers’ have signed a ‘declaration of conscience‘ stating they will not prosecute ‘peaceful climate change protestors’ and will ‘withhold [their] services in respect of supporting new fossil fuel projects.’ Predictably the tax specialist and founder of the ‘Good Law Project’ Jolyon Maugham KC is amongst the signatories, although the practical
When seven Just Stop Oil protesters were convicted of trespassing, the judge in the case had some warm words for those found guilty. District Judge Graham Wilkinson at Wolverhampton Magistrates’ Court praised the activists’ ‘admirable aims’ after they disrupted operations at an Esso fuel terminal in Birmingham last April. Wilkinson told the group during the
Mason Greenwood’s future at Manchester United remains uncertain, but one thing is clear: the footballer will not be available for selection for HMP Strangeways next season. Greenwood – by all accounts an absurdly talented young footballer – had faced charges of attempted rape, ABH and controlling and coercive behaviour. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced
What should judges do with potentially dangerous prisoners waiting for their trial when the barristers’ strike means their cases cannot be heard within a reasonable time? Since April criminal barristers have been involved in a dispute with the government over fees. In a nutshell their case – perhaps I should say ‘our’ case since I
Having said just days ago that they had no objection to Sue Gray’s report being published, the Met have now executed a screeching, tyre-burning U-turn and have asked that the parts of her report dealing with the most serious allegations – the only parts in which anyone has any interest – should not be published
What should we make of the Times story yesterday, which appeared under the headline ‘Boris Johnson Plans To Let Ministers Throw Out Legal Rulings’? The impression given is that ministers will somehow be handed powers by the Prime Minister simply to ignore court rulings that they do not like. That would lead to an extraordinary
The report by Sir Richard Henriques into Operation Midland argued that the Metropolitan police was institutionally incompetent, stupid and credulous. If the devastating report by the independent panel into the 1987 murder of Daniel Morgan is to be believed, the force is also institutionally corrupt. The institutional corruption consisted of dishonestly ‘concealing or denying failings,
On Monday evening Sir Keir Starmer tweeted an explanation for why Labour would not be supporting the Police, Crime Sentencing and Courts Bill. Coming from a former director of public prosecutions this was dire stuff. First, and perhaps least importantly, the word ‘statues’ does not appear in the Police, Crime and Sentencing Bill. Sir Keir
Sir Richard Henriques, the former High Court Judge who published a devastating report on Operation Midland – the Metropolitan Police’s investigation into a fictitious ‘VIP paedophile ring’ made up by Carl Beech and others – has called for a criminal investigation into the officers who botched the investigation. Amongst a catalogue of other failings, officers
Nobody has done much travelling this winter apart from Instagram influencers travelling to Dubai to pose with baby tigers. But the United Arab Emirates is now on the government’s red list. Should the influencers wish to return home they face a dilemma: spend £1,750 to be locked up for ten days in a Slough Premier
There has been considerable agonising in legal circles over the propriety of David Perry QC, who had accepted a brief to prosecute pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong. One of the defendants in the case is the 82-year-old barrister Martin Lee QC, the founder of a pro-democracy party in Hong Kong, who has been accused of
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Kate Andrews explains why she’s voting for Biden despite being a lifelong Republican (00:35); Matthew Parris urges you to go to Sweden while you still can (7:30); and Rory Sutherland wonders whether he’s cracked the Covid problem (14:45).Update Description
Should the Food Standards Agency be permitted to engage in torture in order to put a stop to the sale of horse meat? Should the Gambling Commission have the authority to issue licences to its agents to commit murder with impunity? That would be the astonishing outcome were the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct)
If you were looking for the archetype of a crank it would be Piers Corbyn. Rather like his long-forgotten younger brother, he has an unfortunate habit of consorting with people who hold very unpleasant views. So it was no surprise that the anti-lockdown demonstration he organised last Saturday was attended by a motley crowd, with
What is a suitable punishment for those who kill a policeman? For PC Andrew Harper’s widow, Lissie, the sentences given to her husband’s teenage killers – a maximum of 16 years – were woefully insufficient. Many agreed. And now Lissie Harper has started a petition calling for ‘Harper’s law’. Half a million people have signed up,
Prominent amongst the achievements of the current government has been the establishment of a battalion of ministerial taskforces. We now have the culture renewal taskforce, the waste taskforce, the infrastructure delivery taskforce, the libraries taskforce, the university research and knowledge exchange sustainability taskforce and the roadmap taskforce (whose onerous task it is to coordinate no
