The Secret Barrister- Trial on Trial: Part 2- The Case for the Defence

Summary 

In Chapter 9 of the Secret Barrister Stories of the law and how it is broken, we look at a variety of issues to do with the Defence and we look in-depth about the issue of lying and what it can result in, including a guilty verdict for someone who is not guilty. Like many of the chapters in this book, the writer includes a case study this time about a man wrongly convicted of indecent assault.

The first issue I am going to mention is that a vulnerable defendant must have a trusted adult or solicitor with them during any interview which should take place at a police station as not only these people might not understand what is going on but the police may pressure these vulnerable people into things which is again the law.

Secondly, we discover that if you are wrongly convicted of a crime then your first appeal will go to the court of appeal where they will look at all the evidence and reconsider the sentence. However, in some exceptional circumstances, the court of appeal does not act on your appeal and may even extend your sentence as requested by the prosecution. In these circumstances, the CCRC is the last call of action where they will lead an investigation of their own and will appeal at the court of appeals if they find anything in their investigation which would show the defendant was wrongly accused.

We also hear in this chapter that the police have very strict rules that they must follow when conducting investigations but there are times when they do not follow these rules and so not only does it result in a wrongful conviction but the police officer's responsible can also be punished for not following the necessary rules.

In the modern-day, we look towards Science much more than we use to and a jury has been known and can come up with a verdict based only on the scientific evidence. However, The Secret Barrister points out that sometimes this scientific evidence can be wrong for a variety of reasons but most commonly because of contamination either when taking the samples or in the laboratory.

We mentioned above about wrongful convictions and a reason for this can be because the police have been known to believe the victims from the start. In some cases, the police do not look at the background of the victim and believe them completely and their statements may send the defendant to prison when they did not commit the crime. This is because it is well known in some cases of the victims lying about the crime and being known to frequently lie in the past and not only the police keep foolishly believing these people sometimes the background is not provided to the court.

The writer of the book then concludes the chapter talking about a variety of things discussed and what they would change about it. The writer mentions that they would want juries to give reasons for their verdict in order to properly sentence the accused and also to make it easier to appeal if needed.

As always this is only a summary of the chapter where I have mentioned only a few of the issues that stuck out to me and so I highly recommend that you read this book for yourself in order to learn about all the issues of our criminal justice system in more detail. Please also either buy me a book or donate via PayPal using one if the buttons at the side of my blog to help me out.