Law Weblog

How much to barristers earn?

Over £500,000 it appears, and you don’t have to be a QC.
The figures are for Crown Prosecution Service lawyers who dealt with the highest profile cases. The cases dealt with by the high earners included infamous murders and rapes. This is gross earnings before tax, expenses and chambers costs.

The details were revealed in a written parliamentary answer which you can see here.

The long awaited report from Lord Carter of Coles “A Fairer Deal for Legal Aid” proposes reforms

There would be less money available for criminal legal aid and changes to deal with the “legal advice deserts” where the public are unable to find locally a solicitor to deal with civil cases on legal aid.

The emphasis is on value for money. The report proposes targeting resources on people who most need it, requiring those who can contribute do so and ensuring that everyone has access to justice.

To reduce court time in criminal matters some radical ideas are put forward for example prosecutors to initiate discussions with defence representatives around the point of charge. It is thought that by providing legal advice to defendants at this point will enhance the prosecutor’s capacity to charge accurately from the outset which is hoped to produce early guilty pleas  (the case of R v Goodyear [2005] CA allows a judge to indicate the sentence that might follow a guilty plea).

Competition within the market will determine the rates to be paid for services rather than relying on government to determine these rates centrally. By holding the competitions on a regional basis for volume work it will be possible to pay the rates necessary to ensure supply. In other words the legal aid work will go to the lowest bidder.

In family law it is recognised that there needs to be some changes to bring about improvements outlined in the government’s green paper “Every Child Matters”.

Lord Carter has published his report on a market based reform of criminal legal aid. Lord Carter was asked to conduct an independent review to consider the means by which to deliver the Government’s vision, set out in “A Fairer Deal for Legal Aid”, for procuring publicly funded legal services, particularly criminal defence services.

It is available on the legal aid procurement review website

The role of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC)

No disciplinary action will be taken against two police marksmen who shot dead Harry Stanley, a father of three from Hackney, east London, in 1999 after a table leg he was carrying in a bag was mistaken for a sawn-off shotgun.

Murder charges against Inspector Neil Sharman and Pc Kevin Fagan were ruled out by an earlier inquiry by Surrey Police.

Full details here

Attorney General to appeal unduly lenient sentences given to baby rapists

The Attorney General is to ask the Court of Appeal to increase the sentence given to the Webster (40) and French (19) who raped a 12-week-old baby and took photographs of their abuse of her.

Webster was jailed for life after he pleaded guilty to rape, indecent assault, permitting indecent images to be taken of a child and making indecent images.  French received a five year jail sentence and was given an extended licence period of five years after she admitted the same charges. 

The Attorney will ask the Court of Appeal to find the tariffs (12 years in the case of Webster) unduly lenient and to increase them.

R v James and Karimi [2006] CA

The law of precedent appears to have been changed by the Court of Appeal, who in this judgment has preferred the ruling by the Privy Council to the House of Lords, text books on the law of precedent need rewriting as from today. Two appeals were heard together because each turns on the true interpretation of “provocation” s3 Homicide Act 1957. The court sat five strong because they raise a novel and important question of the law relating to precedent.

Held: In effect, in the long term at least, Holley has overruled Morgan Smith.

Full case report here

Constitutional Reform Act

On 3 April key parts of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 which will deliver the central aspects of those reforms will come into force. These will bring the new Judicial Appointments Commission into operation. They will also strengthen and clarify the respective roles of the Lord Chancellor and Lord Chief Justice, in particular ending the Lord Chancellor’s position as a judge.

More details here

Assault – actus reus – cutting hair is ABH

Smith, DPP v [2006] QBD
D caused actual bodily harm to V by cutting off her pony tail. D went to the home of his ex-partner and cut of her pony tail with kitchen scissors. The magistrates accepted that there was no actual bodily harm; the DPP appealed.

Held: Cutting off a person’s hair amounted to ABH. Harm was not limited to injury to the skin, flesh and bones and extended to hurt and damage. That the hair cut was “dead tissue” was not relevant.

Obiter: If paint or some other unpleasant substance were to be put on a victim’s hair that would to could amount to actual bodily harm. R v Donovan [1934]; R v Chan-Fook [1994]; R v Stephen Cook (unreported, 28 July 1994, CA) and R (on the application of T) v DPP [2003] considered.
Guilty

Rare conviction of a company for manslaughter

20th January 2006:
Construction company proprietor Wayne Davies of A & E Buildings, based in Knighton, Powys, was today sentenced to an 18-month custodial sentence for manslaughter.

Mark Jones, aged 40 was killed in South Staffordshire whilst installing the barn roof; Mr Jones and another man worked at roof height from a ‘home-made’ basket balanced on the forks of a telehandler belonging to Mr Davies.

The telehandler tipped over, throwing both men approximately 25 feet to the ground Mr Jones sustained fatal injuries from which he died the other man was seriously injured.

Picture of a telehandler from FW Crane Products.

Diverting offenders: fixed penalties and reparation instead of court

The intention to divert more offenders from the court system would affect about 200,000 not 1 million as was reported in the press this week.

Diverting offenders from the court system is not new. Police for years have issued cautions to offenders who admit their guilt and fixed penalty tickets have been available for twenty years. The Crown Prosecution Service’s “conditional cautions” is to be extended throughout England and Wales.

In exchange for a caution the offender agrees to rehabilitation or reparation. He might start drug rehabilitation, or clean off graffiti. The reason this is controversial is because it transfers a quasi-judicial role to Crown Prosecutors.

What is proposed is diversion for not having a TV licence not paying council tax and other low level criminal offences.

News item here

Judges “guilty” over fraud case costs

Jury trials for fraud cases may not be scrapped, because judges, not juries, are to blame for the “enormous” cost of big fraud trials, according to an unpublished report by a working party of three leading criminal QCs.

The working party believes that there would be little saving in time or cost if juries were to be abolished in serious fraud cases, as the Government currently intends. Indeed, cases could take longer because the judge would be expected to consider more detailed evidence and write a reasoned verdict.

The story is to be found in The Telegraph, here.