The Defence Brief

Dr Evil Brendan McCarthy, who self-styles himself Dr Evil, has entered a guilty plea to causing grievous bodily harm on several people. There’s nothing exceptional about that, except that all of Dr Evil’s victims not only asked to be seriously wounded… they actually paid for the privilege! Mr McCarthy is a tattoo artist from Wolverhampton who offered body modification to his customers. This includes tattoos, piercings and tongue splitting as well as genital beading, ear modifications and nipple removal. It seems to have been the tongue splitting, ear modification and nipple removals that formed the basis of the case against him. Dr Evil's menu Dr Evil was charged with assault occasioning grievous bodily harm, which is an offence contrary to sections 18 and 20 of the Offence Against the Person Act 1861; I gather from the press reports that Mr McCarthy was charged with the more serious version under section 18, which reads, “Whosoever shall unlawfully and ma...

The tweet from Charlie Kirk I came across a screenshot of a Twitter post while on Facebook this morning. The original post now has 11,000 retweets and 23,000 likes on Twitter. As you can see from the picture somebody called Charlie Kirk, who is a right-wing American commentator, claims that there are 933 violent crimes in the UK per 100,000 people. This is more than double the rate he claims for the USA where he says there are only 399 violent crimes per 100,000 people. The UK doesn’t feel that violent to me, so is it true? We’re all gonna die According to the FBI, in 2016 there were 1,248,185 violent crimes committed across the whole of the USA. That is an increase of 4.1% on the 2015 figure but still represented only 386.3 violent crimes per 100,000 people . So, Mr Kirk appears to be slightly overestimating the violent crime in the USA. I should say that I am using the 2016 figures as those are the latest available on the FBI website, so maybe he has slightly differe...

Semi automatic rifles for sale at a gun show in Texas So, the USA has a problem with guns. Or, to be more accurate, America loves guns but has a problem with them being used to kill innocent people, often en masse. There are literally millions of guns in the USA and while people, including me, regularly suggest an Australian-style buy-back of weapons and an outright ban the reality is that is unlikely to happen, if for no other reason than it will cost the government an absolute fortune – the Australian buy-back took around 650,000 weapons off the streets but an equivalent in the US would require something like 60,000,000 guns to be bought and if they cost an average of $500, which seems reasonable having checked out the Texas Gun Trader website for the prices of second-hand weapons, that would cost $30,000,000,000… which is a lot. What then can be done about the problems of mass shootings in the short term? I think the answer is, probably, not very much. But, I do wonder ...

Mitigation can significantly reduce a drink driving sentence There is a, very minor, story in today’s Daily Mail about a businessman sentenced for drink driving that has led to quite a few people asking why he received a fine of £488 (actually, he was fined £367 but the Mail got that bit wrong) and a 14-month driving ban while Chris Tarrant was fined £6,000 and handed a 12-month ban for the same offence , even though Mr Tarrant had a much lower alcohol level.  As I acted for the businessman, I’m tempted to say that the difference must reflect the fact that one had a specialist drink driving solicitor while the other was represented by a corporate crime expert, although I’m sure that the truth is that the law on sentencing came into play. So, since people are speculating about the differences in sentence I though we might as well take a moment to look at how people are sentenced by criminal courts. We’ll use drink driving as an example, but the principles apply to all c...

Daily Mirror the day after the killings For those who do not know, the Harry Roberts we are talking about today is a man who murdered three police officers in 1966 – not the doctor who dedicated his career to helping the sick of Stepney. Ironically, it is the doctor who is more worthy of our memories but it is the murderer who dominates out thoughts. In Shepherd’s Bush, Roberts shot DC Con Wombwell, 25, in the face then shot DS Christopher Head, 30, killing both officers instantly.  His accomplice shot PC Geoffrey Fox, 41, killing him too.  Roberts had been sitting in a van with John Duddy and John Witney after the three committed an armed robbery.  The three police officers approached the van to ask some questions when the gang opened fire on the unarmed officers, killing all three. Following the doctrine of joint enterprise, Roberts was convicted of all three murders even though he actually killed two of the officers himself. After his trial, he wa...

Psychoactive drugs "Drugs are bad, M'kay" so says South Park Elementary school counsellor Mr Mackey.  Clearly, the Home Secretary agrees and has proudly proclaimed that she has banned over 500 drugs in the past 5-years. I imagine that making all those orders to ban drugs must get quite tedious, which is why Mrs May has come up with the ingenious solution of banning all psychoactive drugs.  The point of this is to prevent people taking legal highs, which are often made by untrained people, working in unsafe environments and using questionable ingredients.  Quite how that doesn't already breach some health and safety law is beyond me, but apparently it doesn't because the government wants to stop people taking them. As a lawyer, there are two questions I think are important.  First, what is a legal high?  Secondly, what is a psychoactive drug? To answer the first question, I asked Frank who told me that "'[l]egal highs' ... contain on...

Katie Hopkins article in the Sun Sorry but this post is long and contains some actual law. Last Saturday the Sun newspaper printed an article by Katie Hopkins that has garnered a great deal of public outrage, not least because it was published shortly before 700 migrants were killed trying to make the crossing that Mrs Hopkins discussed in her article.  I’m lead to believe, a number of reports to the police were made saying that the article incited racial hatred.  But does it? In writing this blog, I will be honest and say that I begin from the starting point that the Sun has some pretty able solicitors working for it and I am dubious whether they would allow an article to be printed that crossed the line.  But, it’s always worth double-checking. What are the offences? The Public Order Act 1986 contains a number of crimes of which about five involve some form of racial hatred (but not including vanilla offences that can be racially aggravated). T...

I saw on the TV last night that Panorama will be presenting a show about how children are trafficked across Europe to beg and steal. It's nice that the TV and authorities have finally picked up on this problem, indeed the Crown Prosecution Service now has a whole team dedicated to trafficking and a policy about it too . Trafficking has it's sexy side - by which I mean a side that gets reported regularly, probably because it involves sex, which gives the newspapers the chance to titillate their weird readers and set the tongues of everybody else tutting at the inhumanity of johnny foreigner and/or the vile indifference of men who pay for sex. What rarely gets reported is the flood of kids who are brought to the UK (and indeed every other European country) so that they can beg and steal.  This isn't reported presumably because then the press would have to side with the feral youth whose crimes they like to gleefully report.  These kids in my experience are usually betwe...

I stumbled onto a copy of "Working with women prisoners" on the Prison Service website while looking for a copy of the Prison Rules. One of the most remarkable things that stood out in the document for me is the table of who is looking after the women prisoners' children while they are in prison. Just 9% are cared for by their fathers; while 8% are in care.  A relatively massive 24% go to grandparents and 17% to a "female relative".  So, almost twice as many children are cared for by a general female relative as opposed to by their dad. From my own experience, it is far more common for me to deal with a youth who has little or no contact with his dad than it is to deal with one who has regular contact with daddy.  I've also dealt with a few who have no contact with their mums and they are often the most screwed up kids of the lot. I was never a fan of the old Tory governments witch hunts against single mothers, but I do think that a lack of family co...