The Defence Brief

Following Ken 'The Beast' Clarke's announcement of his policy of reducing sentences for sex offenders by 50% in return for a guilty plea a lot of solicitors and barristers felt that this was a bad idea and that it should be scrapped.  Low and behold it now has been scrapped.  But where does that leave the lawyers? There is talk that scrapping this plan will cost in the region of £130 million.  This means that the Ministry of Justice will have to find another way to save that money or they could ask the Treasury for a hand out.  If the Treasury gives them the money then all the other departments will coming running with their begging caps held out.  So, a Treasury bail out looks pretty unlikely to happen; the MOJ isn't a bank after all. What then are the MOJ to do? They could scrap the Victims' Commissioner but I doubt that would save much money and would definitely make bad headlines in the Sun, although I know a few bloggers who would be pleased to see th...

Before a suspect is interviewed the police will usually disclose the basic facts of a case to the suspect's solicitor, which is one of the best reasons for having a solicitor by the way! There are rumours flying about that the CPS are refusing to authorise charges of suspects because of budget constraints - I most recently heard this the weekend before last at a party from a Met police officer and again last Friday from a BTP police officer at a Chas and Dave concert (I have high musical tastes!) Consider this piece of disclosure in a theft case, "LBH have produced CCTV evidence which shows the offence... The defendant is currently on bail for two like offences... [and] has 14 previous convictions for theft offences..."  The disclosure also makes the point that a CCTV operator witnessed the offence as it happened, which is how the police came to be called. I cannot comment about whether the CPS are deliberately refusing to charge, but in this case the CPS refused to...