Criminal

THE new Chairman of the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), Paul Mendelle QC, has called for the Government to re-think its approach towards the publicly-funded Bar. He is taking over as Chairman of the CBA, which represents over 3,600 criminal barristers and is the largest specialist bar association in England and Wales. Commenting on the year ahead, Mr Mendelle said: 

“I am acutely aware of the challenges which face the Criminal Bar. Self-employed, publicly-funded barristers work incredibly hard and their very long hours of work outside the court sitting day are rarely seen or appreciated by critics. They provide highly-skilled, cost-effective advocacy to the public and that we possess a criminal justice system of such fairness is in large part due to the excellence of the representation available equally to both prosecution and defence. 

“Have you embellished your evidence?” Joyce Plotnikoff and Richard Woolfson, the authors of Measuring up?, examine the challenges of questioning young witnesses at court 

The involvement of the private sector in the government’s fight against fraud is welcome, but significant dangers—for both victims and the criminal justice system—lurk below the surface, warns Jonathan Fisher QC 

Sam Clyndes, who worked as an intern at the Mississippi Office of Capital Defense Counsel, highlights the problems facing defendants in death-penalty cases.  

What is the road to judicial killing in the state of Mississippi, where I spent three months on an internship with Amicus, the charity which assists in the provision of legal representation for those awaiting capital trial and punishment in the US, at the Office of Capital Defense Counsel (“OCDC”)? 

Lara Maroof looks at the misuse of expert virological evidence in HIV prosecutions 

The Union of International Lawyers, of the International Criminal Bar Association is organising a seminar about the defence before the international criminal courts on 11th and 12th September 2009. This seminar will deal with the questions relating to the functioning of these jurisdictions, their procedural rules, the evolution of their jurisprudence, and their future from a political point of view as well as a legal one. 

BEREAVED families should have access to legal representation at inquests, the Bar Council and the Criminal Bar Association have told the House of Lords. 

This change is one of a number of amendments being sought by barristers to the Coroners and Justice Bill. The Bar Council and the Criminal Bar Association sent a briefing to members of the House of Lords, outlining their views on key aspects of the Bill, which is having its Second Reading in the House of Lords today. 

Iain Morley QC worked for four years at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Tanzania prosecuting four cases of genocide in Rwanda. He reports on the work performed by the tribunal.  

Between April and July 1994, in 100 days, at an average rate of 10,000 souls per day, almost one million minority defenceless civilian Tutsi men women and children were systematically butchered by the Hutu majority throughout Rwanda, mostly with machetes, knives, spears, and cudgels, sometimes with grenades and firearms, sometimes by the army and police, but mostly by fearsome civilian militias often called the Interahamwe. There is evidence very many of the several hundred thousand women were raped before being murdered. The pretext for the carnage was the assassination of the Hutu President Juvenal Habyrimana on 6 April 1994, against a background of ethnic troubles over generations, smoldering particularly after the advent of independence from Belgium in 1959. 

The Family Bar Association (FLBA) has presented the Ministry of Justice with a dossier of case studies showing the harm that could result if funding cuts to the legal aid system go ahead. 

The recent reforms in the area of fraud and financial crime amount to little more than re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, writes Jonathan Fisher QC. More radical reform to the statutory framework is required