The Secret Barrister Quotes

it is outrageous that the law appears deliberately incomprehensible to those who need to understand it most.

Justice? – you get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law.’ William Gaddis, A Frolic of His Own (1994)

We weren’t sure whether to believe the defendant or the complainant. We find the defendant guilty.

You may well know a lawyer, or of a friend of a friend who’s a lawyer, who is fabulously well off. If so, I offer you an iron-clad guarantee that they are not a criminal lawyer.

despite the grand principles at its heart, at nearly every stage of our prized system of criminal justice we see things going badly, and preventably, wrong.

When we ask what sort of society we want, can we tolerate imposing the ultimate coercive sanction – permanent deprivation of liberty – upon people who we agree may reasonably be entirely blameless?

For all that work, the solicitor will be paid a single fixed ‘police station attendance’ fee of roughly £170. If that sounds a low gross figure for what might amount to twenty hours’ work, it’s because it is.

No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled. Nor will we proceed with force against him except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.

If in so doing, I help to secure the acquittal of someone who is in fact guilty, or the conviction of someone who may be innocent, that is frankly not my professional concern. The jury had the evidence, fairly and lawfully presented and scrutinized. It was for those twelve neutrals, not me, to decide whether the state had made them sure of guilt.

If we are being misled, or misinformed, or even directly lied to, to what end is this being done? Whose interests are really being served?

But – and I repeat in the vain hope that enough choruses might carry the message across the pond and through denser skulls

For me, the lesson of history is that the state alone cannot be trusted to find the truth.

We deceive ourselves, our cognitive dissonance only resolved by our brains reassuring us that, in spite of what anyone else might think, we know we're in the right.

in order to qualify as a barrister in this country, a historic condition has been that, as a student at Bar school, you had to attend your Inn and eat twelve meals.

Oh, and the horsehair wigs? They, like the black gowns which barristers adopted when mourning the passing of Charles II, are simply a relic of Restoration fashion.

one bald statistic stands out above all: only 55 per cent of people who have been a victim or a witness in criminal proceedings would be prepared to go through it again.

Hanlon’s Razor holds that one should never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by neglect,

the graft and ingenuity of police officers who I will not hesitate to say rarely get the public recognition or gratitude that their sacrifices richly merit.

To try to make sense of sentencing is to roam directionless in the expansive dumping ground of the criminal law.

The state is told that, where the conviction it has secured against one of us is so undermined that no conviction could possibly be based upon it, it need not say sorry.

Justice? – you get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law.

You’re right, mum. You’re right, your majesty [the best distortion of a magistrate’s honorific that I’ve ever heard]. I’ll do it. I’ll do the work.

We preferred the evidence of the complainant, because she is the complainant.

That is a disparity of nearly twelve percentage points, or, put another way, you have a 23 per cent better chance of being acquitted in the Crown Court.16

The magistrates’ court is the accident and emergency department of criminal justice: any moment, a problem will walk through the door and the prosecutor will have to deal with it blind.

It is of more importance . . . that innocence should be protected, than it is, that guilt should be punished; for guilt and crimes are so frequent in the world, that all of them cannot be punished

An Israeli study of parole board decisions in 2011 showed that a prisoner’s chances of release receded to near zero as the clock ticked towards lunchtime, immediately after which the likelihood soared.

But to bang again on this rusty, perforated drum, the primary cause that is identified by every person in the system, every parliamentary report and every purse-lipped auditor remains lack of proper funding.

No funding to address the fact that, in two thirds of cases where the victim has alleged serious sexual abuse, the CPS can’t even afford to send a proper Victim Letter of adequate ‘quality, content and tone’.

Free pro-victim slogans, inexpensive talking shops and circular expressions of intent will triumph over costly extra court sitting days, a better quality of private contractor or a properly resourced prosecution service.

my personal favourite, which I took home with me from the heart of rural Wales and will treasure forever: ‘Well, we’ve had a think about it, and we reckon you probably did it. You did, didn’t you? Go on. No? Well we think you did.

The Law Commission, the independent statutory body charged with researching and publishing recommendations for potential law reforms, put it succinctly in 2015: ‘For a lay person to discover the law would be practically impossible.

if the evidence has been gathered and not lost, if the witnesses have attended, if the interpreter is present, if the defendant has been produced from custody, if the court can actually accommodate a trial – the hard part, surely, is over?

While the client enjoys legal privilege – and so I won’t reveal it to the court if he confesses his guilt to me – I cannot present a positive case that I know not to be true. Were I to do so, I could be hauled before a disciplinary hearing and disbarred.

And we swallow the MoJ’s premise that tribunals, and access to justice, are just for other people. Until it bites us, until we hear about our friend being abused by her co-workers for wearing a hijab, or see our ashen-faced husband come home, laid off without notice and with no idea where to turn, or learn that our teenage daughter is being paid below minimum wage and denied holiday pay by her leering, groping pub landlord, we can dismiss the true meaning of the protections we’ve spent decades constructing.

This was the fate visited upon Conservative MP Nigel Evans in 2014, who, having chosen to pay privately to successfully defend himself of allegations of sexual assault, found himself £130,000 poorer due to the reforms poetically brought in by his own party.

A working paper by two economists studying juvenile court sentences in Louisiana between 1996 and 2012 reported robust findings that longer sentences were imposed by alumni of Louisiana State University following unexpected defeats for the Tigers, the LSU football team.

In February 2017, inspectors concluded that ‘there was not a single establishment that we inspected in England and Wales in which it was safe to hold children and young people’.46 Prison deaths are at record levels: 354 prisoners died in custody in 2016. Of these, 119 were suicides.

There is no excuse for the amateur, sausage-factory paradigm of justice and ‘that’ll do’ complacency that pervades 94 per cent of criminal cases, other than that most cynical political trinity: it’s cheap, it’s the way we’ve always done it and no one who votes either knows or cares.

Our system operates so that unless you can prove to the highest legal standard that you are innocent, no miscarriage of justice will be acknowledged. It creates a legal fiction as to what constitutes a ‘miscarriage of justice’, entirely at odds with our common understanding of the term.

I don’t like the sound of that, either. I’m laughing along with the others. But I’m secretly bracing myself. I want to stand up and say my own piece, as though she’s the prosecuting barrister, and I’m the defence. That’s not how you’re meant to feel, listening to a speech from a loved one, is it?

what system would I want as the falsely accused? Knowing what I already know after only a few years exposed to the grimy coalface of the criminal justice system, would I have faith in an inquisitorial jurisdiction where the state, with its variable competence and political vulnerability, controlled my fate throughout? Or would I trust the presentation of my case to an independent solicitor and advocate, and hope that twelve ordinary people, shown evidence that is relevant, reliable and fairly adduced, would find the prosecution insufficient to convict me? Every time the answer is the same.

We may, in our darker thoughts, care little about whether a suspected terrorist is extradited to a state where he might be executed, or tortured, or might not receive a fair trial; but a legal system which permits this for a suspected terrorist would have to allow it for your partner, or friend, or teenage son whose computer whizz-kiddery lands him in hot water with the security services of a foreign power. Tearing down the edifice of human rights, as we are urged is in our interests, simply because it occasionally results in a benefit to people we don’t like, is the politics of the kindergarten.

at the last estimate, there were roughly only twenty prosecutions of malicious rape complaints per year,4 while there are approximately 7,000 annual complaints of rape made to the police.5 Under-reporting of sexual offences is widely accepted to be numerically far more prevalent than malicious complaints.

Throughout the web of the English Criminal Law one golden thread is always to be seen, that it is the duty of the prosecution to prove the prisoner’s guilt . . . If, at the end of and on the whole of the case, there is a reasonable doubt, created by the evidence given by either the prosecution or the prisoner . . . the prosecution has not made out the case and the prisoner is entitled to an acquittal. No matter what the charge or where the trial, the principle that the prosecution must prove the guilt of the prisoner is part of the common law of England and no attempt to whittle it down can be entertained.12

Between 2010 and 2016, the politically unimportant Ministry of Justice was required to implement budget cuts of over one third, the hardest-cut department second only to the Department of Work and Pensions.24 As it slashed court staff and closed magistrates’ courts with gay abandon – reducing the number of magistrates’ courts from 330 to around 150

what, for me, the notion of justice is about. And that is fairness. To me, fairness is rooted intractably within what we mean when we talk about criminal justice. Fairness to the defendant. Fairness to the victim. Fairness to the witnesses. And fairness to the public. When we cry that an outcome or a procedure is unjust, we tend to mean that it’s not fair.

I really can see why our criminal justice system, as curiously evolved a mongrel of a system as one might hope to find – one which, even the official website of the English and Welsh Judiciary admits, is ‘contradictory’, ‘confusing’ and which ‘it is doubtful [. . .] anyone asked to design a justice system would choose to copy’26 – is still widely regarded as one of the best in the world.

We can either keep rising numbers of prisoners in humane prisons that serve a purpose beyond warehousing, for which the Exchequer – ultimately you, the taxpayer – must pay through higher taxation; or we can shift paradigms and explore evidence-based policy from abroad that would see the use of prison radically reduced, and non-custodial, restorative and rehabilitative alternatives envisaged not as a ‘get-out’ but as meaningful components of a working justice system.

And it is that faith in process as justice that explains and justifies my role as an advocate. It is what permits me to bat away with ease the inevitable dinner party questions – How do you defend someone you believe is guilty? Have you ever prosecuted someone you think is innocent? – with a nonchalance that belies the gravity of the argument. I am just a cog in the machine. Impersonally carrying out my role is key to ensuring that the delicate justice ecosystem remains in symbiosis.

The demographic of most defendants in these courts is homogeneous; society’s lost boys and girls, a sorry parade of abused children turned drug-abusing adults. Sliding on and off the bottom rung of social functioning, in and out of homelessness, joblessness and wretched worthlessness, their histories are scabbed with violence, mental ill-health and chaos, and their present lies in a parallel universe where the middle-class ambition of the Good Life is replaced with a desperate scrapping for daily survival.

At the heart of the concept of the rule of law is the idea that society is governed by law. Parliament exists primarily in order to make laws for society in this country. Democratic procedures exist primarily in order to ensure that the Parliament which makes those laws includes Members of Parliament who are chosen by the people of this country and are accountable to them. Courts exist in order to ensure that the laws made by Parliament, and the common law created by the courts themselves, are applied and enforced. That role includes ensuring that the executive branch of government carries out its functions in accordance with the law. In order for the courts to perform that role, people must in principle have unimpeded access to them. Without such access, laws are liable to become a dead letter, the work done by Parliament may be rendered nugatory, and the democratic election of Members of Parliament may become a meaningless charade. That is why the courts do not merely provide a public service like any other.

It is of more importance . . . that innocence should be protected, than it is, that guilt should be punished; for guilt and crimes are so frequent in the world, that all of them cannot be punished . . . But when innocence itself, is brought to the bar and condemned, especially to die, the subject will exclaim, “It is immaterial to me whether I behave well or ill, for virtue itself is no security.” And if such a sentiment as this were to take hold in the mind of the subject, that would be the end of all security whatsoever.

The underlying principles, accidental and incoherent though their evolution may have been, have been exported around the globe for good reason: the presumption of innocence and burden of proof, the right to a fair trial, the right to independent legal representation, equality of arms, an independent judiciary, non-partisan tribunals of fact and the other fiercely debated, non-exhaustive aspects of the rule of law on which our present settlement is premised, all stand as self-evidently necessary to our instinctual conceptions of justice.

There are a range of sentences each with their own qualifying criteria, from discharges and fines through community orders to custodial sentences, both immediate and suspended. There are mandatory life sentences, automatic life sentences (not the same thing), discretionary life sentences, extended sentences of imprisonment (various iterations of which each carry their own special complex provisions about prisoner release dates), special sentences for ‘offenders of particular concern’, hospital orders (with or without restrictions) and mandatory minimum custodial sentences, to name a few.

We don’t want to think about being a witness to our husband’s stabbing. Or supporting our wife through her rapist’s trial. Or receiving the phone call reporting that our straight-A son’s exam celebrations got a bit lairy and ended in him taking his mate’s dad’s Jag out for a spin, wrapping it round a lamp post and killing his three passengers. Or our grandfather being accused of sexually abusing young boys as a Scout leader in the 1950s. Such things don’t happen to people like us. The criminal courts are not the place for people like us. Legal aid isn’t something that is ever going to affect people like us.

Stage one of the investigative process – has a crime been committed? – is rendered redundant. Whereas for the children of Rochdale or Savile, the default conclusion of the police was always ‘No’, the equally unsatisfactory default under this model is ‘Yes’. The box is already ticked, no questions asked. Only if the police are satisfied of the opposite will it ever be unticked. I can do no better than directly quote Sir Richard: this policy ‘perverts our system of justice and attempts to impose upon a thinking investigator an artificial and false state of mind’.25 It ‘has and will generate miscarriages of justice on a considerable scale’.26

Hey—we have a problem. You have some unexpected guests down at the gate. You should go check it out.” Guests? Who would come here to see me? I hop in the golf cart and drive down to the main gate. Just in time to hear Franny Barrister, the Countess of Ellington, tearing into a poor, clueless Matched security guard. “Don’t you tell me we can’t come in, you horse’s arse. Where’s Henry—what have you done with him?” Simon, my brother’s best friend, sees me approach, his sparkling blue eyes shining. “There he is.” I nod to security and open the gate. “Simon, Franny, what are you doing here?” “Nicholas said you didn’t sound right the last time he spoke to you. He asked us to peek in on you,” Simon explains. Franny’s shrewd gaze rakes me over. “He doesn’t look drunk. And he obviously hasn’t hung himself from the rafters—that’s better than I was expecting.” “Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Simon peers around the grounds, at the smattering of crew members and staging tents. “What the hell is going on, Henry?” I clear my throat. “So . . . the thing is . . . I’m sort of . . . filming a reality dating television show here at the castle and we started with twenty women and now we’re down to four, and when it’s over one of them will get the diamond tiara and become my betrothed. At least in theory.” It sounded so much better in my head. “Don’t tell Nicholas.” Simon scrubs his hand down his face. “Now I’m going to have to avoid his calls—I’m terrible with secrets.” And Franny lets loose a peal of tinkling laughter. “This is fabulous! You never disappoint, you naughty boy.” She pats my arm. “And don’t worry, when the Queen boots you out of the palace, Simon and I will adopt you. Won’t we, darling?” Simon nods. “Yes, like a rescue dog.” “Good to know.” Then I gesture back to their car. “Well . . . it was nice of you to stop by.” Simon shakes his head. “You’re not getting rid of us that easily, mate.” “Yes, we’re definitely staying.” Franny claps her hands. “I have to see this!” Fantastic.

The link between ideas and action was a theme which featured large in the life of Mahatma Gandhi. It is not easy to decide to what extent, if at all, concepts of the West influenced him in his youth. He came from a traditional family in Gujarat, and had no contacts with westerners in his early years. However, the event which he regarded as a tragedy of his childhood, the secret eating of meat, was caused chiefly by his notion that it was meat-eating which had made the English powerful. Later, as a young man not quite twenty, he persuaded his reluctant and none-too-affluent family to send him to England to train as a barrister. Gandhi, who could be so frank about some matters, was reticent about the sentiments which had spurred him on to this venture. He simply wrote in his autobiography that he jumped at the chance to get away from the difficult studies at his college, when a family friend suggested that he should go to study in England. Reaching England, he became an ‘aspirant after being an English gentleman’ for about three months, then turned into a serious student and gradually pared his expenses down to the bare necessities. Gandhi had promised his mother that he would not touch meat in England, an undertaking which caused him some hardship until he discovered a vegetarian restaurant. At the same time he discovered books on vegetarianism. These made him a vegetarian by choice, when previously he had felt bound by his vow and had looked forward to becoming a meat eater ‘freely and openly some day’.37 It was an early personal experience of ideas as an aid to the better working of action. Gandhi was of a practical turn of mind that looked for ideas to suit the needs of situations. In spite of his deeply ingrained Hinduism, Gandhi’s intellectual flexibility made him accept those elements of western thought which fitted into the ethical and social scheme he considered desirable. Synthesis,

The one thing worse than a liar is a liar lying about being a liar.

Lady Audley's clear blue eyes dilated as she fixed them suddenly on the young barrister. The wintry sunlight, gleaming full upon her face from a side window, lit up the azure of those beautiful eyes, till their color seemed to flicker and tremble betwixt blue and green, as the opal tints of the sea change upon a summer's day. The small brush fell from her hand, and blotted out the peasant's face under a widening circle of crimson lake.

We hold in the highest disdain the parental and state failings that visit such misfortunes on children like Dillon. Most of us would have the most urgent sympathy for newborn Dillon in care; five-year-old Dillon being beaten by his stepfather; seven-year-old Dillon being misdiagnosed as not having any special educational needs; eight-year-old Dillon preyed upon by gangs who lurk outside the care home knowing it to be a ripe source of cheap, impressionable drug-and-weapons couriers; nine-year-old Dillon being given his first taste of cocaine. Yet the moment they turn ten, the age of criminal responsibility, and transgress the law, the oasis of public sympathy is exposed as a mirage; we zero in on that word – responsibility – and demand that these children take it.

Prison as we presently do it is an expensive way of making bad people worse.

Pontificating on criminal law presents an easy and often irresistible opportunity for lawmakers to register political credit, and many views expressed often appear tailored to tickling party political G-spots.