Author: Matthew

Yesterday 23 year old Laura Cunliffe was sentenced to 14 weeks imprisonment for microwaving a kitten to death. Apparently the kitten, Mowgli, had attacked her pet goldfish so she put it in the microwave for 5 minutes. She realised what she had done after a minute and took it out. It died about 90 minutes later.

It is always unwise to comment on a case without knowing the full facts but,  on the basis of what has been reported, here goes.

This was an absurd punishment, not because killing cats is a trivial matter but because Cunliffe is quite clearly somebody who ought not to be in gaol. According to her solicitor she has suffered from psychotic depression for years and has been sectioned at least 20 times. As she was led away in handcuffs, one member of her family shouted: “She doesn’t know what’s happening – she hasn’t a clue.”

Psychotic depression is a nasty illness:

According to the United States National Institute of Mental Health:

“a person who is psychotic is out of touch with reality. People with psychosis may hear “voices.” Or they may have strange and illogical ideas. For example, they may think that others can hear their thoughts or are trying to harm them. Or they might think they are possessed by the devil or are wanted by the police for having committed a crime that they really did not.

People with psychotic depression may get angry for no apparent reason. Or they may spend a lot of time by themselves or in bed, sleeping during the day and staying awake at night. A person with psychotic depression may neglect appearance by not bathing or changing clothes. Or that person may be hard to talk to. Perhaps he or she barely talks or else says things that make no sense.

… those with psychotic depression usually have delusions or hallucinations that are consistent with themes about depression (such as worthlessness or failure), whereas psychotic symptoms in schizophrenia are more often bizarre or implausible and have no obvious connection to a mood state (for example, thinking strangers are following them for no reason other than to harass them). People with psychotic depression also may be humiliated or ashamed of the thoughts and try to hide them. Doing so makes this type of depression very difficult to diagnose.”

We do not know, of course, whether her psychosis contributed directly to her offence, although it seems very likely that it did. What we do know is that she is someone who is exceptionally mentally vulnerable and who now has to endure weeks locked up in prison.

She will be used to being locked up: although her solicitor’s reported claim that she has been sectioned twenty times sounds extremely unlikely.

But there is all the difference in the world between the therapeautic environment of a mental health unit and the punitive and sometimes violent environment of a prison. If she is indeed mentally ill, it is all but inevitable that prison will aggravate her condition.

Of course she should have some access to psychiatric help in prison but she will, in the main, be looked after by prison officers who – decent as many of them may be – have little or no training in how to deal with people with serious mental disorders. She will also be exposed to other inmates who are not selected for their sympathetic and enlightened nature towards the mentally ill. Many ,of them will probably take an old-fashioned and unnuanced line on cruelty to cats.

No conceivable good will come of the sentence. It is hard to imagine that anyone in the future will be deterred from microwaving a cat by the thought that they may receive a 14 week gaol sentence.  There may even be some unimaginative folk,  to whom the idea of irradiating a cat would not otherwise have occurred, who will now try it out.

Nor is there the slightest prospect that Miss Cunliffe will be “rehabilitated” or “reformed”. She will be mentally tortured for seven weeks and then released sadder and sicker than she was before.

English law has always excelled at dishing out cruel and pointless punishments. We have abolished the treadmill, oakum picking, the lash and the gallows.

It’s about time we now abolished gaol sentences for the mentally ill.

1. Assistant barman

2. EU special negotiator with Putin

3. Justice Tsar

4. Solar panel

5. Wind turbine

6. Drilling rig

7. Cavity wall insulation

8. Puppet
   

9. Poodle

10. Er, can’t think of another

This Friday, March 7^th the criminal bar goes on strike.

What is proposed is a day on which defence barristers will not work (save in exceptionally sensitive cases involving children or vulnerable witnesses), followed by an indefinite period in which they will not accept “returns;” that is they will not take over briefs originally given to a barrister who for reasons of another case over-running, illness, etc becomes unavailable.

Assuming that the “no returns” policy is applied by a large number of barristers – and all the indications are that support is practically universal – the effect will be virtually immediate. Many defendants will turn up at court to find that they have no advocate.

Judges will have to decide whether to insist that trials go ahead with unrepresented defendants. Most will refuse to allow that to happen. Even if they try to proceed prosecution barristers – mindful of their professional and ethical obligations – will refuse to prosecute trials in which defendants are unrepresented.

The disruption to the courts will be immense.

Good. Continue reading “Grayling’s plans for the legal profession are profoundly wrong. Why I support the strike”

Does Tescos want to encourage its customers to kill themselves? One would have thought not but for some time now some branches have been running a promotion that may well have that effect.

If it piled packets of cigarettes by the checkout it would rightly be vilified; it would also be prosecuted. So instead, it is – perfectly legally – piling up packets of paracetamol in the most prominent position possible, by the check-out queues.

Overdosing is the commonest method of suicide amongst women of all ages, and paracetamol is the drug most commonly used. There are, on average in England and Wales, over 120 deaths each year from paracetamol poisoning, most of which are deliberate.  Many are teenagers. Continue reading “Paracetamol should be more tightly regulated to prevent suicides”

“Now listen to this,” said David to Chris

I want you to take over the law.

It’s easily done,

You’ll have some fun

And there’s some things that I need you there for.

*

Our voters think that long spells in the clink

Should be handed out far more.

So fill up the jails

In England and Wales

Then we’ll sell them all off to Group 4.

*

Other than that, you have quite a free hand

To change whatever you find

But I am intending

To cut public spending

So please do bear that in mind”

*

Continue reading “The Ballad of Chris Grayling (Part 1)”

It is hard to keep up with the numbers of “victims” who have failed to convince juries in the last few weeks. Bill Roache was said to have raped or indecently assaulted five women. Dave Lee Travis was accused of indecent or sexual assault by eleven. The jury rejected all Mr Roache’s charges except one: that one never reached the jury having been thrown out by the judge. In Mr Travis’s case the jury found him Not Guilty of 12 counts but could not agree on the remaining two. The Crown Prosecution Service will now have to decide whether to seek a re-trial on these two remaining charges.

Much justifiable praise has been heaped on DLT’s barrister, Stephen Vullo, whose closing speech was widely regarded as something of a tour de force, as well as on Louise Blackwell QC who defended Roache. It is little short of outrageous that despite their acquittals the defendants will recover none of their legal costs.

The CPS, meanwhile has come in for a great deal of criticism. What on earth was it doing bringing these cases which juries have obviously found so unconvincing? Does it take its prosecution decisions on the basis of cold hard reason or, as Simon Heffer has argued – in the course of a rather eccentric and inaccurate but nevertheless welcome attack on the Justice Secretary Chris Grayling – is its obsession with political correctness leading it to prosecute cases that it should leave well alone? Continue reading “DLT and Bill Roache: Is the Crown Prosecution Service obsessed with political correctness?”

One of the more curious revelations about the Tottenham Hotspur bestiality case is the fact that the North London club has a training ground of such bucolic charm that it could have been the inspiration for Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony. Mr Lovell is due to be sentenced in March for outraging public decency by trying to have sex with a variety of sheep and cows in a field next to the club’s training ground.

Much of the evidence against him came from Lawrence Stephen, a 23 year old tree surgeon and his girlfriend Natasha Brennan who were picnicking “underneath their favourite oak tree” last September. Not only was it an apparently attractive picnicking spot, it was also full of cows and sheep that, at least at first, were quietly grazing. As they settled down to enjoy their picnic their emotions would have matched those depicted by the maestro in the first movement: “cheerful thoughts upon arriving in the countryside.”

I know North London quite well and, away from the obvious spots such as Hampstead Heath (where there are no longer any farm animals) and a few scattered fields in Finchley there are precious few places with a choice of oak trees suitable for a picnic. We don’t know quite how far they had got with their lunch before matters moved swiftly to an unexpected scherzo. This was not at all like Beethoven’s version of “country folk dancing and revelling” but something a little darker and more bizarre. Perhaps Shostakovich or Bartok would have been better at catching the mood. Certainly Bach’s Sheep may safely graze would have been particularly inappropriate. Continue reading “Sex with animals: what is and is not allowed”

 Amongst the 90% of the population who do not wish the Liberal Democrats well, many will have been delighted by the mess they have made of the investigation into the alleged sexist behaviour of the of the party’s former Chief Executive and psephological Svengali, Lord Rennard.

The police quickly completed a criminal investigation into the allegations and decided to bring no charges.

Normally that would have been the end of the matter but the Liberal Democrats have always prided themselves on openness, fairness and justice. The Party therefore carried out its own inquiry, led by the distinguished Liberal Democrat barrister Alistair Webster QC.

It has been been widely criticised as secret, unfair and unjust.

Almost as bad, far from producing finality or “closure” it appears to have set the scene for further legal wrangling for months and perhaps years to come. Continue reading “Rennard “sex scandal” is a fox that will run and run”

The Government is right to cut public spending but the legal aid cuts proposed by Chris Grayling, the Lord Chancellor and Minister for Justice, will increase the likelihood criminals going free and of innocent people going to gaol. They will devastate both the barristers’ and solicitors’ professions. The savings to public money – even if they are achieved – are minuscule in comparison to the damage that the cuts will inflict. The cuts in criminal legal aid will be felt most by the poorest: many, perhaps most, defendants in criminal criminal cases are penniless. But a decent criminal justice system is essential for everyone whether rich or poor. Continue reading “10 Reasons Why criminal barristers are right to strike today”

It is depressing enough that the Labour Party has established a “Victims Taskforce” intended to “transform the criminal justice system into a criminal justice service geared towards protecting the public and supporting innocent victims of crime in bringing those guilty to book.” All of us have become used to politically inspired empty gestures, especially in the field of criminal justice. The newly knighted former Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Keir Starmer, has agreed to chair it. We should remain optimistic and assume that the Taskforce is just a pointless gimmick because the alternative that it may succeed is much more worrying. Continue reading “Protecting the innocent is even more important than convicting the guilty”