“The public’s right to live in safety and to be protected from criminal conduct lies at the heart of the criminal justice system. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and the Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office (RCPO) protect the public by prosecuting firmly and fairly, and by doing so in an open, transparent and independent way. Our duty is to serve our communities and to do justice in every case.”

So said the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, QC, when last week he published his plan for taking forward the public prosecution service. He said that for too long the CPS had been part of a criminal justice system. Criminal justice should not be a system, it should be a service, and developing criminal justice from a system to a service is now a priority. He identified the key to a dynamic and responsive public prosecution service as Core Quality Standards which set out clearly what is expected. They will lay down the minimum in terms of quality and delivery that the public are entitled to expect from those who prosecute on their behalf. The standards will cover every major aspect of CPS work, from protecting the public to advising the investigator, through to defining the standards of service in respect of every aspect of the prosecutor’s role in court, and supporting victims and witnesses in dealing with complaints.

The RCPO and the CPS are to merge and it is claimed that this will provide for a more flexible organisation, better placed to deal with specialist, organised, crime. At the same time a core commitment identified is to the communities served. Prosecutors are to be community prosecutors, so that they know the types of crime that cause most local concern and are able to take the public’s views into account in their decisions and in the information they place before the courts. The DPP said that criminal justice is not delivered as effectively and efficiently as it should be. “It is high time for the electronic case file and electronic case management systems to become the main currency in the criminal justice service.” Of the 104,000 cases placed before the Crown Court, 73% result in the defendant pleading guilty without the need for a trial. Given the extent to which the Crown Court is predominantly a sentencing court, the DPP said there should be a fresh look at how best to conduct business there. “Guilty pleas need to be identified earlier, so that valuable time and resources can be concentrated on those cases which are actually going to result in a trial.”

The Attorney General has created a Strategic Board to review and improve the delivery of public prosecution, fraud and legal services for which she is responsible. An outcome of that Board’s work has been the creation of an agreed protocol that sets out how the Attorney General and the Directors of the prosecution services exercise their functions in relation to each other. It claims to confirm the independence of the prosecution services in reaching prosecution decisions – pace BAE Systems – and sets out the circumstances when the Attorney General will be consulted by the prosecuting departments in order to ensure Parliamentary accountability.

The DPP concludes that “a criminal justice service underpinned by the rule of law and respect for human rights is at the heart of modern democracy…Fair, fearless and effective; open, honest and transparent; protective, supportive and independent: these are the qualities that the public has a right to expect of its public prosecution service. We are determined to meet those expectations.”

The full text of the plan can be found at:-

www.cps.gov.uk/news/articles/
and you are invited to send any comments to GeneralFeedback@cps.gsi.gov.uk

The ‘Times’ is justifiably proud of its law report coverage, but it is not every day that it figures in one of the reported cases. That happened this week when two High Court judges fined it for contempt of court in revealing how the jurors in a manslaughter trial reached their verdict.

Michael Seckerson, the jury foreman, was one of two jurors who dissented from the verdict in the case of Keran Henderson, a childminder, who was convicted for the manslaughter of 11 month old Maeve Sheppard while in her care, and jailed for three years. Their comments were published by the ‘Times’ in an article headlined “Jurors break silence to insist childminder did not kill baby”. In the article, the jurors, who were not named, expressed the belief that Henderson was wrongly convicted of killing the child by shaking her so violently that she was left blind and brain damaged. The contempt case was brought by the Attorney-General under Section 8 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981. The ‘Times’ and Mr Seckerson argued that contempt proceedings could not be justified in the light of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to freedom of expression, subject to exceptions such as the need to maintain the authority and impartiality of the judiciary. They said that there had been no damage to the administration of justice, no individual juror was identified, no individual’s opinions were disclosed and the articles were written in good faith, after taking legal advice. The heavy reliance placed on expert medical evidence in “shaken baby” cases made it a matter of public importance.

Section 8 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 states that:

“(1) Subject to subsection (2) below, it is a contempt of court to obtain, disclose or solicit any particulars of statements made, opinions expressed, arguments advanced or votes cast by members of a jury in the course of their deliberations in any legal proceedings.”

The judges said that it was not suggested that sub-section (2) had any bearing on this particular case. They explained the traditional arguments in favour of the total secrecy of the jury system. “Its strength and value depend on the open and frank expression of views between twelve people in the secrecy of the jury room. Confidence to express views in that way depends on juror’s knowledge that the views will not be revealed outside the jury room. Jurors should not be constrained by fears a juror would legitimately have if his friends and neighbours, and the general public, may come to know of his views, which could be unpopular views. If views were expressed in the hope of their being disclosed, or with an intention to disclose, that would also have a deleterious effect on the quality of deliberations”. Lord Justice Pill said that the court acknowledged the mitigating factors but had to impose penalties “sufficient to mark the seriousness of breaches of Section 8 and to deter others from following the example of this juror and this newspaper”. The ‘Times’ was fined £15,000 and Mr Seckerson £500. The Attorney-General was awarded £27,426 costs.

The full text of the judgement in Her Majesty’s Attorney General and Michael Alexander Seckerson and Times Newspapers Limited in the High Court of Justice, Administrative Division, (Case No: CO/12411/2008) can be found at:
http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2009/1023.html

I went to Old Trafford the other day to watch Lancashire play Yorkshire in a pre season friendly (Yorkshire? friendly? – now there’s an oxymoron) and in particular to monitor Andrew Flintoff’s latest rehabilitation.

There I bumped into Max, a solicitor acquaintance of mine. Apart from the cricket, what was on his mind was the very real danger, as he sees it, of the UK adopting a system of plea bargaining very similar to the United States. His immediate cause for alarm is the recent issue of a consultation document by the Attorney General proposing that fraudsters be able to negotiate lower sentences if they admit their crimes. This was one of the key recommendations adopted by the Government in its response to the Fraud Review in March 2007. It argues that the option to negotiate an early plea could mean a reduction in long, expensive fraud trials, less strain to victims and witnesses, caused by delays and potential savings to prosecution and legal aid resources.

The consultation document proposes that prosecutors would be allowed to negotiate a plea agreement with the defence based on the defendant’s level of culpability and possible sentence in return for a guilty plea. The agreement would then be presented to the judge for approval, who could accept or reject it, defer his decision or simply give an indication on maximum sentence.

Lady Scotland was at great pains to point out that this will be plea negotiation, stating that this “is not about mirroring the United States’ system of ‘plea bargaining’. Clearly the US system would not work within our own legal system, but I believe the framework this group has produced could show us exactly how we might achieve early pleas and shorter, less expensive fraud trials”.

Max is not convinced and sees this as the not very thin end of a very large wedge. The arguments about long and expensive trials can also be applied to many criminal and to most terrorism trials. He intends to make his views known. If you wish to do so, or obtain a copy of the consultation document, then go to www.attorneygeneral.gov.uk or contact the Attorney General’s Office at 20 Victoria Street, London, SW1H 0NF.

As to the really serious business of the day, unfortunately the Manchester weather had the last say. An untimely and torrential downpour put paid to any prospects of play, leaving us to go home early in what was by then mockingly glorious sunshine.