The Defence Brief

Acquittals don't necessarily mean the shadow of a rape allegation disappears The Court of Appeal, led by the Master of the Rolls, published its judgment in the case of Regina (R) v Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police & Another a few days ago. While the title of the case may have non-lawyers reaching for the back button to escape a boring legal discussion, I beg you to hold fire just a moment because this is one of those cases that just might impact on your life one day. In Greater Manchester Police (sorry I’m not typing the whole case name out every time – maybe I should call it Peter’s case, since that’s the name of the Chief in question… on second thoughts that’s probably too silly even for me), the court considered an appeal from the High Court against the dismissal of R’s claim for judicial review. The Greater Manchester Police case began when R was accused of rape – he was put on trial and acquitted. For the moment, we know no more about him o...

The EU flag: like a ref flag to a bull New Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has suggested he would consider re-nationalising the railways.  In response, UKIP leader Nigel Farage stated that this was impossible due to EU Directive 2012/34/EU, which he says requires railways in member states to be in private ownership. EU law is not my area of expertise; however, I have done my best to research this topic and from what I have found I must disagree with Mr Farage. First, Directive 2012/34/EU does say in the preamble: "In order to render railway transport efficient and competitive with other modes of transport, Member States should ensure that railway undertakings have the status of independent operators behaving in a commercial manner and adapting to market needs." However, when you read through the directive (which is very long and very tediously drafted) it does not actually appear to require the railway to be in private ownership.  At most, the directive req...

  If you're thin you're not coming in - classy One of the things that annoys me the most is politicians who think that the criminal law is a way to solve all of society’s ills.  Quite often I’m annoyed that politicians are claiming that the thing they are discussing is one of society’s ills but that’s a different story. The thing that is annoying me today is the French and Caroline Noakes MP, she heads the All Parliamentary Group on Body Image, which sounds at once both a very specific topic and yet one with a very wide reach.  The French have created a criminal offence of using a thin model in a fashion show and Ms Noakes wants to introduce the same crime here. In France those caught breaking the law face up to six-months imprisonment – the reports I’ve read are unclear whether that means prison for the organiser, the model booker or the model herself.  Who knows, maybe if we’re going to be really tough on crimes like this we should be imprisoning a...

The European Court of Human Rights is much funkier than Ealing Magistrates' Court As we all know Europe’s sole reason for existing is to frustrate the British Government and annoy the British people with their directives, regulations and pesky decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. The minor fact that the European Union has nothing to do with the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) is just a technicality – they’re all in it together. A big complaint among those opposed to Europe is the ban placed upon us by the ECtHR preventing us from locking up murderers and throwing away the key.  I did point out what a lot of nonsense this is more than a year ago in January 2014 in Aiming for a century . In a nutshell the problem arose because the UK government abolished the review of whole of life sentences that used to take place when they were 25-years into their sentence.  The ECtHR, not unreasonably, puts rehabilitation at the core of the convention ...