Author: bruceandholly

Tuesday December 24th. 1 hour to midnight. Thought I would have a glass of Sherry to celebrate Christmas. Nothing in the house. Hmm! Oh well! Glass of Ribena instead.

Christmas Day. Everything closed. Had some guests for lunch. Ordered a takeaway from the local karahi. After some rummaging, I found a tiny bottle of wine tucked away at the back of the dresser. It was a Marks and Spencer St Michael’s own label. Don’t know how old it is. But wine keeps, doesn’t it? Every year divers dredge up ancient bottles of wine from a sunken shipwreck. Then somebody drinks it. But nobody wanted to drink this. So it’s gone back in the cupboard for next year.

Is it me, or is Christmas- New Year break getting longer? Closing everything down for a week now seems par for the course. When I started work many years ago, we actually worked New Year’s Day. Wasn’t an issue. Then somebody decided to make it a bank holiday. And until a couple of years ago, there was also a few days between Boxing Day and New Year when you could catch up with stuff. Never understood why there are no trains or buses on Christmas Day but you can still catch a plane to New York.

Have you seen the faces of the 50 guilty men? Nor have I. I’m talking about the men convicted of raping an unconscious woman. I was expecting to see their faces splashed over the front pages of this morning’s tabloids. Instead, another picture of the brave Gisele.

So I don’t understand why those guilty men have been permitted to hide their modesty. Why has no-one ripped the masks from their faces?

As an armchair criminologist, I want to know the motive behind these crimes. Was it the impotent rage of a cuckolded husband smoldering behind a smiling facade until it erupted like Mount Etna? A man who hated his wife but would rather savour his revenge instead of simply divorcing and moving on with his life? But that doesn’t explain why he upskirted other women. Maybe he just hated women.

And what does a sentence of 20 years imprisonment really mean under French law? Is he going to have to serve every day of that 20 years? Or is it like Britain, where 20 years imprisonment means 10 years. Because that’s when you get automatic release. Let’s hope not. Otherwise, it barely amounts to a month’s imprisonment for each rape. Hardly justice.

I’m alarmed by pressure from senior legal figures to scale back the defendant’s right to jury trial from intermediate offences carrying a maximum sentence of less than two years.  Yes-I know that there is a two-year crown court backlog.  But whose fault is that?  If the State really wants to do justice to defendants as well as victims, it should appoint the judges and make court-space available to reduce that backlog, instead of closing courts.

As is apparent from the stepping down of former Transport Minister Louise Haigh, the real damage of a criminal conviction is not the derisory penalty handed down by the judge or magistrate but the damage to future life-prospects.  We have already seen proposals by the Scottish Government to remove juries in alleged sexual offences in an effort to improve conviction rates.  Is that really what it’s all about?

I have always been a supporter of jury trials, not only in criminal cases but also in some civil cases, where there are major issues of fact (such as libel or slander), or where an individual is facing the might of the State.  Though as a conveyancer, it is hardly likely that I will be addressing a jury any time soon.  But if ever I was at the wrong end of the criminal proceedings, I would certainly want my guilt or innocence decided by a jury instead of a handful of State-appointees.  We have already seen in the Northern Ireland legacy cases, what happens when an ex-serviceman’s right to jury trial is taken away.  Of course, it is not for me to say whether those ex-servicemen would have been convicted or acquitted if their cases had been tried before a jury.  Only that, without a jury, they didn’t have a chance.