Bakers Talk
I was in the bakery the other day waiting to buy bread. In front of me was a woman in her sixties dressed in white cropped trousers and a bright floral tunic. She ordered a low gluten loaf and then said to the 
shop assistant, ‘I see Heather’s had her baby.’ It wasn’t a question.
I assumed Heather was one of the shop assistants. The young man serving nodded his head. ‘She was 7lbs 2oz. This morning at 5.o6.’ He spoke with an air of authority that made me think he might be the father or at least a close relative of the new mother.
The woman then said, ‘Has she got a name yet?’
‘Harper’
‘Harper. Well, I suppose it could be worse.’
The shop assistant looked rather taken aback by this remark. I thought it was a rather rude comment so I said, ‘That’s a nice name. Named after a famous author.’
The woman and the shop assistant both looked at me. ‘Harper Lee. The author,’ I said.
‘Oh, yes. The author,’ the woman said.
The shop assistant smiled at me, asif he was thanking me for providing a reason for the baby’s name.
Then the woman said, ‘More likely Victoria Beckham’s child.’ She picked up her bread and swept out of the shop.
“Blood on her hands”
A thoughtful commentary
Ben Butler convicted of the murder of his girlfriend’s daughter Ellie, in the criminal Court.
Ellie had been removed from the care of Ben and Ellie’s mother (who was convicted of child cruelty and perverting the course of justice) in 2007 by the family Courts with findings made that they had caused her a serious injury and placed with Ellie’s grandparents.
In 2012, Mrs Justice Hogg overturned the previous findings and returned Ellie to the care of Ben and Jennie Gray. The Judge had said that fresh medical evidence showed that the previous findings were wrong, and that Ben and Jennie were exonerated and that it had been a miscarriage of justice and that it was a joy to be able to return Ellie to their care.
The case was widely reported as a miscarriage of justice in the family Courts, put right by Mrs Justice Hogg and the unusual step was taken to name the…
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Why I will vote Remain
I was born at the end of the Second World War and grew up in its shadow. It was Winston Churchill who first mooted a European Union as a way of ensuring the rest of the century and those centuries to come would not be blighted in the same way. He was right and there have been no major wars on the European Continent since 1945. I believe maintaining that peace is one of the most important things the EU does and we, a European nation, should be part of the institution. 
I was exposed to immigrants when I was in my early teens in the fifties, when in a vain attempt to keep the cotton industry alive, mill owners brought mainly young men from the Indian Sub-Continent to work as spinners and weavers, in their factories. The town I was brought up in is now largely populated by the children and grandchildren of those immigrants. At about the same time Afro-Carribeans were invited to come to the UK to drive our buses and trains, and to work in the NHS. Immigration started long before we joined the EU.
Of course, it puts pressure on our public services and this is particularly so when we have a government, and I’m not trying to be party political in this, who have imposed austerity on us. I don’t know about the NHS but I guess as most of the immigrants from the EU are young, it is not them who put pressure on the Health Service, it is us oldies. We are an aging population, we need young people, not just to care for us in our old age, but to pay the taxes that pay our pensions as well.
As far as the shortage of housing goes, again I’m not sure that is caused by immigrants from the EU. In London it started in the 60’s when the wealthy from the Middle East began to buy property in central areas. That has continued with Russians, Chinese and many others buying property as an investment. Properties they hardly ever use, pushing the price up and up. In addition, many of the banks pay very high wages and bonuses to their staff many of whom are from non-EU countries. When the right to buy was introduced by Margaret Thatcher, the amount of social housing was reduced and not replaced. Local Authorities were not allowed to borrow money to build more houses. Nothing to do with the EU rather shooting ourselves in the foot.
For many years now house building has not kept pace with demand. There are many reasons for that, including builders banking land until they can maximise profits and nimbyism. Nothing to do with the EU. In addition, where are the plumbers, the carpenters etc to do the work? In our rush to persuade everyone to go to university, we have neglected the artisanal skills. One only has to try and find a workman to quickly realise that they are either EU nationals or to be polite ‘getting on a bit.’ We have not given our young people the skills we need.
That vexed issue of sovereignty, what ever that is. No individual, organisation or state exists in a vacuum. ‘No man is an island.’ We can only make any progress if we work together, and any treaty restricts our right to free determination. We live in a global village, our problems particularly climate change don’t recognise borders. We are members of the UN, Nato and the Commonwealth and we have many other treaty obligations, each one restricting our right to do as we please. We might be better with getting changes in the EU if our MEP’s worked to get change inside rather than trying to wreck the organisation.
The European Convention on Human Rights has its critics, but the French and the German have more right to complain about it as it was British Lawyers who wrote it. The intention was to have a court where the aggrieved individual could assert his rights against the state. It protects us from arbitrary interference in our liberties.
We seem prepared to allow our public services to be run by foreign companies, e.g. the proposed nuclear power station to be built by the French with money from the Chinese. Just think EDF. Many companies are so large and so powerful that we need to be part of a bigger block to be able to regulate them.
Nor do I believe any of those who promise there will be money for things like the NHS, farmers, fishermen and the Universities. Some of those who advocate this are the very ones who want to cut state involvement. Market forces will take care of everything – I don’t believe that. Those in rural areas need to remember that we are largely an urban nation now and those in the towns and cities have many more representatives in Parliament. e.g there are 73 MP’s representing London constituencies alone. They won’t vote for farmers subsidies.
I haven’t even mentioned the economy, but I can’t believe that changing the terms of for our exports to Europe will lead to a sudden blossoming of new partners. At best it will take quite a long time, if it ever happens. I remember our economy before we joined the EU and we were struggling, even in London. Since we joined we have in the main flourished. So I’m for in.
Life at the Bar – Viewing the Locus in Quo
I only did one other case where the jury were taken for a view of the scene of the crime. The defendants were a couple in their sixties. They were both small, round and grey haired. It would be hard to imagine a more unlikely pair of criminals. They had been charged with handling stolen property – large quantities of cigarettes, hundreds of the sort of packages you can buy duty free. The cigarettes were found in the meat safe of their council flat in north London. They claimed to have no knowledge of them, saying they were hidden there by someone else. They couldn’t say who although the suspicion was that one of their sons was the culprit and he had smuggled them into the country. 
At first blush it seems improbable they were not aware such a large quantity of cigarettes in their two bedroomed flat and that made the location of the meat safe an important issue in the trial. One might have expected the pantry to be in the kitchen but at some stage the flats had been reconfigured and the kitchen moved to the rear. This had resulted in this space being next to the front door. There were photographs of the interior of the flat which showed the boxes of cigarettes in the meat safe and its location. They said they didn’t use it and somebody must have placed the packages there when they were in the living room or bedroom. Perhaps if they had been prepared to say the cigarettes had been put there by a member of the family they might have been believed or at least given the benefit of the doubt. Although they would still have been guilty of handling if they agreed to store the goods, but the jury might just have felt sorry for the position they were in and acquitted them.
The trial lasted a couple of days or so and on the Friday I expected the Judge to do his summing up and sent the jury out, leaving me free to start another case on the following Monday. However when I arrived at court the usher told me the Judge had decided the jury should have the opportunity to see the flat and they were making the necessary arrangements. Eventually, we set off in a convoy to the couple’s home, a coach for the jury, a large black limousine for the Judge, the defendants in a prison van, and I was squashed into a car with the police officer and prosecuting counsel. We got there about lunch time and everybody was given the opportunity to look round the flat. There wasn’t room for us all to get into the property at the same time so we inspected the flat in shifts. When we had finished the Judge looked at his watch and said it was too late to go back. He extended my clients’ bail.
As the jury was lead back to the coach, the limousine took off going north. Back at the Old Bailey, prosecuting counsel and I were discussing whether the ‘view’ was really necessary when we were interrupted by a more senior member of the Bar,
‘Which Judge was it?’
We told him, and he then said, ‘Is there racing at Newmarket? If there is, he was on his way to the races.’
Life at the Bar – Inquisitive jury
What happens when one of the jury decides to investigate issues in a trial? I was defending a man charged with importing a Class A drug, namely cocaine. The defendant whose name was ‘Gray’ had arrived in the UK from Jamaica via Amsterdam. The car that collected him from Gatwick was followed through the streets of south London by detectives in an unmarked police car. They claimed a package had been thrown from the nearside front window of the car and they had radioed for assistance before stopping the vehicle. The occupants were asked to get out and my client ran off. He didn’t get very far before he was arrested and searched. Nothing incriminating was found on him nor in the vehicle. 
A search began to find the item thrown from the car. There was some difficulty in locating anything that fitted the description of the item. My client disputed he had thrown anything away although he said he might have dropped the packaging of some food out of the passenger window. Not surprisingly the police found plenty of that. After a thorough search of the area, a young police officer found a small parcel on the pavement of a nearby road. The difficulty for the prosecution was that the parcel was not found on the route the car had taken, nor close to where my client had run. In his defence, I relied on a set of plans of the area and cross examined the detectives as to which streets the car had been driven along and which ones my client had run along. No police officer was able to say they had seen anything dropped by the defendant as he ran away.
When the officer who had found the package was called he gave the name of the street in which he had found the package and he identified it on the plans. He relied for his evidence on notes he had made as soon as he returned to the police station, as he was entitled to do. I got him to mark the map and asked the jury to do the same on their copies. His explanation for the package not being in the road the defendant had run along was that he must have thrown it over the garden walls.
The next day one of the jurors handed a note for the Judge to the usher. He had been to look at the scene and he judged it was impossible to throw anything from one street to the other. The Judge was very annoyed because the only evidence a jury can take into account is that which they have heard in court. He had two options. The first was to abort the trial and start again with a different jury, or allow all the jury the opportunity to look at the location. He chose the latter. We all had to wait until the afternoon before a coach could be arranged to take the jury and a car to take the Judge. Counsel and the police officer had to make their own way there. My recollection is that I walked and still arrived before the coach. When the young police officer saw the street he had named, his mouth fell open as he realised he had made a terrible mistake. The Judge was furious.
Had the defendant been in possession of the drugs or was it a plant by the police? The jury came to the conclusion they couldn’t be sure of the defendant’s guilt and acquitted him. I’m sure that police officer would never make the same mistake again.
There was another feature of the case that makes it stick in my memory. ‘Gray’ was a professional musician and claimed to have played with Bob Marley.
Life at the Bar – The Lemsip Rapists 2
At the start of the trial, the QC representing the older man and the QC leading me for the younger one made applications to sever the trial. The Judge was not having that. In some ways it was less of a disadvantage to us than it was for the co-defendant, because if his counter allegation of blackmail succeeded it was unlikely the jury would convict our client. What emerged during the trial was that the young woman had gone home and told her family what had happened, her father and brother had then gone to the Hotel and confronted the two men, threatened them and demanded a very large sum of money, my recollection is something in the region of £25000 with the promise the allegation of rape would not be reported to the police. The family members just happened to all have criminal convictions for armed robberies and a previous for extortion, which lent some credibility to the older man’s story. 
Some payment was made and again the defence for the older man could prove that on the day the family members had visited the Hotel and gone up to the suite, a sum of money was drawn on cash from the elder man’s bank account. He said he told the girl’s family he needed time to raise the rest of the cash.
One of the facts that may have supported that was the delay of a few days before the rape was reported to the police. From the prosecution point of view it meant that there was no forensic medical evidence to support the allegation. For example blood samples did not reveal the presence of any drugs. The interval between the offence and it being reported allowed the defence to argue the delay was to see if they would get the rest of the money they had demanded. Instead of trying to raise the extra sum the elder defendant left the Hotel and was arrested at Heathrow on his way back to the Middle East. My client had no such opportunity to escape and was arrested the next day. During interviews the older man chose not to reply to any questions he was asked by the investigating officers. My client would have done better to do the same, but he chose to answer questions insisting the sexual intercourse was consensual.
The trial lurched from problem to problem, as the evidence was given before the jury. The young woman maintained they had both raped her. Her father and brother both said they had been to see the two men; they said with the intention of a revenge attack but then thought better of it. The elder man’s reluctance to say anything about his unsavoury business didn’t help anyone. The two defence Silks were continually arguing and attacking each other which allowed the female Silk prosecuting to have a field day. The favourite phrase was ‘It’s like trying to fight with one hand tied behind your back.’ Not surprisingly both men were convicted and were sentenced to seven years imprisonment.
Did the court hear the truth and nothing but the truth. I don’t think they did. I believe there was more to this, than any of the parties were prepared to admit. I know what I think, but has anyone else any thoughts on this case.
Life at the Bar – The Lemsip Rapists part 1
Sometimes a case can seem so bizarre that no writer could ever invent such a script. The pair described in the press as the Lemsip rapists were just such characters. The two men were an unlikely pair, one of Middle Eastern extraction, aged about fifty and the other a thirty something Londoner who had made good. The scene of the rape was a top floor suite in a Park Lane Hotel. The suite comprised two bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, a sitting room and a dining room which was furnished as an office. The elder of the two was an arms dealer who, when he was in London, lived and worked from this suite of rooms. He wasn’t my client so I was never privy to the ins and outs of his business, just enough to know it was very lucrative. My client was the younger man who was employed to run the office and ensure all the paper work for exporting weapons was in order.
Most of the work involved meetings with clients, discussing their requirements that seemed to range from hand guns to helicopters, arranging the purchase and most importantly ‘end user certificates’. These certificates are meant to limit the sale of armaments to persons or countries of which our government disapproves. I wasn’t in any doubt that most of the transactions were illegal. 
The young woman who alleged rape was another employee. She was a temporary secretary who was recruited through an employment agency. It was quite a nice job. The pay was good, the hours flexible and lunch, as well as tea and coffee, was available from room service.
On the day in question, she had come into work with a very heavy cold and during the course of the morning the older man prepared a glass of Lemsip for her and told her to go and lie down in one of the bedrooms. Her case was that he had put some drugs into the drink which made her very drowsy and she had passed out, only gaining consciousness when he was on top of her and having sexual intercourse. Further, she said, when he had finished my client had come into the bedroom and also had intercourse with her against her will. Both men denied the allegations but when interviewed by the police they told very different stories from each other, stories that were mutually incompatible.
The older man said the woman had made the allegation up and she was trying to blackmail him in respect of some of the arms deals he had made. My client said his employer had raped the girl and she had sought solace in his arms and that had resulted in them having intercourse. It was an almost hopeless case to defend, not only was there this conflict between the two defendants but a forensic examination of the hotel suite found traces of a white powder that were crushed sleeping tablets. Both men denied having brought any drugs into the hotel arguing that the rooms had been used be a number of guests in the preceding weeks. They said, and it seemed plausible, the insides of wardrobes and cupboards were not always swept clean.
The trial took place at the Old Bailey.
to be continued
Life at the Bar – Paying the Price
Sitting in a Magistrates Court waiting for your case to come on can be very entertaining. I was doing just that at Bow Street Magistrates Court when a man was brought before the Stipendiary Magistrate for an offence of indecent behaviour in a Royal Park. The man had picked up a prostitute on Park Lane and they had gone into Hyde Park to complete the transaction. A policeman had caught them ‘in delicto flagrante’ under a tree.
Bow Street Magistrates Court
‘I allowed them time to straighten their dress which was in some disarray and then arrested them,’ the officer said with the sort of straight face only a police officer in court can muster. The man pleaded guilty and the magistrate imposed a fine warning him that the consequences may be more severe if he was caught again and may result in him having to explain to his wife where he was and why.
The next person in the dock was the prostitute. She had a long list of previous offences for soliciting in a public place, but the Magistrate was reluctant to do anything other than fine her. When he told her how much she would have to pay, she asked for time.
‘Have you no money with you?’ the magistrate asked.
‘No.’
The court officer confirmed she had only a few coins in her possession and a return ticket to Birmingham where she lived. She was one of a number of woman who came to London and solicited on Park Lane near the hotels in order to supplement their benefit.
‘Did you not get paid last night?’ the magistrate said.
‘No, Sir.’
‘Has Mr X gone?’ said the Magistrate to the court officer.
The policeman put his head round the door to the custody area, turned back and said, ‘He’s still here, Sir.’
‘Right bring him back.’
Mr X was led back into the courtroom, somewhat bemused, and stood facing the Magistrate.
‘You didn’t pay her last night,’ the Magistrate said, nodding towards the woman in the dock.
‘No, there wasn’t time.’
‘Well there is now, you’ll pay her fine.’
And with that both were dismissed from the Courtroom.
Life at the Bar – The Fortune Teller
The horse fair at Appleby in Cumbria is a well known meeting place for Romany families, but they also congregate in other places throughout the country. Some of our most famous race courses are near to sites where Romany families met and showed off their horses and ponies. Many have a continuing interest in horses even if their homes are moved by a different sort of horse-power, and even if their children don’t always go to school they learn to ride as soon as they can sit on a pony. 
One of my case some years ago was defending a Romany man, called Smith, on a charge of assault occasioning grievous bodily harm and possession of a shotgun without a licence. The incident or should I say series of incidents took place at a beach in East Anglia which was one of those meeting places like Appleby. There was a long beach on which horses could be raced and, at night, they blocked off a straight road for trotting competitions.
Horses frequently changed hands at these events and it was the purchase of a pony for his son that lead to the fight for which Smith was now before the court. He had bought a pony from another gypsy who had disguised the animal by painting its distinguishing features, a white star on its head and four white socks, the same colour as its body. When the paint wore off and Smith realised the horse was stolen he demanded his money back. The horse thief refused and there was a fight as well as threats exchanged. The abuse mounted until they had a serious fight in which the horse thief was given a good hiding by Smith. Matters might have stayed there – Romany families are reluctant to involve the police in their affairs- but Smith was still demanding the return of his money. This time, he threatened to use a shotgun on the thief.
The seller of the pony must have taken fright because he called the police anonymously informing them that Smith had an unlicensed shotgun. The police went to his caravan and spoke to his wife who worked as a fortune teller. Smith in the meantime went missing taking his guns with him. After a few days, he returned home, but he left the guns buried in the sand. When the police came again he denied having any weapons, but it didn’t take the police long to find their hiding place, and he was charged with possession of them and of the earlier assault. He pleaded not guilty to the charges saying the guns were not his and as for the assault he was acting in self defence. I think he felt the complainant had only got his just desserts.
The case was tried at Norwich Crown Court, which at that time was in a very old building with no real facilities. I was not optimistic that he would be acquitted, Smith had been a prize fighter at gypsy fairs and the horse thief for all his dishonesty, looked an unlikely opponent. The guns were identified as having been ones Smith had bought from a licensed dealer only months before. However the jury went out and to my surprise were still considering their verdict at the lunch adjournment. The only place to get something to eat was an outdoor café rather like the ones taxi drivers use. I was standing waiting for my coffee and sandwich with my instructing solicitor and behind us was prosecuting counsel, when Mrs Smith walked up to us and asked us what would happen. Before I could explain, counsel for the Crown said, ‘Haven’t you brought your crystal ball, then you could tell us.’
Life at the Bar – The Unquiet American part 2
Walt was an interesting character, half American and half German. He had two older sisters. Their father was a GI serving in Germany. Walt told me the American Army were against marriages between natives and members of the armed forces. Nor were they interested in assisting immigration by families any soldiers had established in Germany. His father was sent back to the USA leaving his mother to bring up the three children alone in a war torn country.
His father kept in touch with the family but after a few years he wrote to say he had married an American woman, (shades of Pinkerton) and he wanted the children to come and live with him so they could have a better life. His mother reluctantly agreed, believing the USA to be some kind of promised land. The two girls went first and Walt joined them when he was seven. To his horror, he found himself taken to a wooden shack in the back woods of Mississippi, where he and his sisters were treated as little more than slaves. Their father’s wife instead of being a mother to them forced them to do a lot of the housework. There was no electricity, no running water and Walt’s job was to chop what seemed an endless supply of timber. They were forbidden to speak German together and were beaten when They were not given any education at all. 
One day when he was about nine years old Walt decided to run away. He was fortunate in making it to the highroad where he was picked up by the local sheriff. The equivalent of our local authority was informed. The two girls were taken from their father and all three were placed in the care of the Local Authority. However the three siblings could not be kept together and they were adopted by different families. Walt ended up in Florida living with a quite wealthy couple who had no children. They encouraged him to speak German and he went to university. When they died he inherited their wealth. He said there was not an enormous amount but enough for him to come and live in the UK, buy a modest flat in London without having to find work. He did describe himself as a writer and poet.
After he moved to the UK, he began to search for his mother and his sisters and was able to locate his mother just before she died. His father he never wanted to see again. Just before the incident he had found his sisters and they had an emotional reunion in the States with the sheriff who rescued them. He showed me newspaper cuttings about their meeting.
The trial in the Crown Court took four days. We had sought discovery and had obtained the papers about the murder investigation which illustrated how close local police officers had become to the family. The Judge, probably on the basis that it could do no harm let the evidence about that relationship be given to the Court. Similarly, I was allowed to ask the sergeant about her connection with the family and to ask her about her bias in favour of the fish shop owner.
Walt gave evidence and admitted the threatening words in the witness box, but he was acquitted of the common assault charge. He wasn’t happy about that. I advised him he had no grounds to take the matter to the Court of Appeal and I thought he had accepted that. Then I started to get letters from him asking to see the notes I had taken at the hearing and a copy of my closing speech. I declined and he reported me to the Bar Council. Something every barrister dreads. When I explained the reasons for not letting him have my notes the Bar Council dismissed his complaint. Anyway, my writing was so bad I couldn’t read the notes of my speech, so I doubt they would have given him an assistance.
scribblingadvocate 