Super Saturday

During the Primaries before the Presidential elections in the US, where the various parties select their candidates, one day is called 'Super Tuesday'. Super Tuesday is a crazy phenomenon. Historically, the States with the most influence on the selection of candidates were either the big States (California, New York, Texas) or the States that held their Primary really early in the process, and helped generate momentum (New Hampshire). Thus, to increase their own importance States started shifting their Primaries earlier and earlier (known as front-loading).

And then Super Tuesday was born - a load of smaller States got together and decided to hold their Primaries on the same day, thus meaning that a huge proportion of the votes available to candidates were available on the same day. Those States that were involved in Super Tuesday were suddenly very, very important.

In 2008, for instance, 24 States held their Primary on February 5th - 52% of the votes were available on that day. Craziness.

But why this (very badly delivered) lesson on American politics?

Because tomorrow marks Super Saturday - 3 interviews in 3 hours. 3 out of 8 the interviews that I've secured. Last year I only did 3 interviews over the whole bloody summer.

Basically, my performance between 9 and 12 tomorrow morning will decide a significant proportion of my applications - and with it, potentially, my future. If I have my 'game face' on tomorrow morning, I could seriously improve my chances of pupillage, if I buckle under the pressure, I could put a Titanic hole in my side.

Let's hope that I come out fighting.

The 'Dream Set'

I think everyone has a dream Set - the place they'd love to get pupillage and spend their career. It's not always the biggest, most successful or most famous Set in any given practice area - everyone has their own reasons.

I interviewed at my dream Set last night, and I genuinely think I cocked it up completely. I mean, I think I handle the general "this is who I am chat fairly well, but then there was an ethical question.

I thought I'd heard all the tricky ethical questions that interviewers love to pull out, but this one completely threw me.

I'm pretty sure I flubbed the answer completely and (at least in part) came to the wrong conclusion.

Ah well, as Marlon Brando once moaned: "I coulda been a contender".

We shall see.

The Prince and the Pauper

I know I moan every time I go, but on Monday I went back to Tower Bridge Mags to watch another afternoon of depression, “justice” and petty-crime. I’m not going to be able to get along to court much in the coming months as I’ve been lucky enough to find a job which should tide me over til the autumn, so this will be the last court report for a while.

I’ve written a couple of lines every now and then over the last few months about the Legal Aid reforms. I haven’t gone into the reforms in depth – I’d rather leave that to better minds than mine – but one of the more convincing arguments, in my opinion, is the risk of an increased number of unrepresented defendants. In a previous post I wrote about Eddie’s struggles with an unrepresented defendant back in February; on Monday I saw yet more evidence of how badly things can go when people are left to face the State on their own.

The case was regarding an alleged benefits fraud, specifically housing benefit. There were problems with Legal Aid in the case, and the defendant had no representation at all. She had previously retained a solicitor but she couldn’t afford to pay them any more. The allegation was that the defendant was not a ‘commercial tenant’ and so should not have claimed over £8,000 in housing benefit as housing benefit is apparently only to be paid to commercial tenants. There are a number of tests that council’s use to decide whether a lease is a commercial lease or not (and it’s worth noting here that ‘commercial’ here doesn’t refer to ‘commercial property’, like a shop, instead it refers to the purpose of the lease – is the landlord letting it on the market for an income/profit or are they doing it at mates’ rates?). There are many factors to take into account such as whether or not there is a written agreement, whether the rent is always paid, what happens if the rent is not paid, whether there is an existing relationship (of any kind) between the landlord and tenant, and so on. It is perfectly possible for a son to be a commercial tenant of his father without a written agreement; likewise you could have a full written agreement with a complete stranger but the council might decide that it is not a commercial agreement. Effectively, these things can be fairly subjective.

In this case the council wanted their money back. The defendant had been going through rough times and so the landlord had let her off rent for 4 or 5 months while she got back on her feet, had paid some of her bills for her and had become quite good friends with her. The council said that housing benefit is to be used for rent ONLY, and the landlord allowing her to spend it on other things is an abuse of that benefit, and actually amounted to fraud on the part of the tenant.

I’d never come across a similar case before, and struggled to get to grips with the law. The defendant had absolutely no idea. The case was prosecuted by the DWP and their in-house lawyer did a good job of explaining the case to the Magistrate. His examination in chief of the council’s benefits officer was pretty clear, and then up stepped the defendant.

Her cross was, understandably, shocking from beginning to end. It was exactly as you would expect a person with no training, no experience, and no understanding to be – unstructured, incoherent and damaging (to her own case). I could see what she was getting at, though:

The DWP’s witness said that housing benefit is only to be paid for rent, and should never be spent on bills. The defendant tried to make a point along the lines of: “But surely there’s a grey area? Sometimes rent will include some bills, sometimes it won’t. It’s surely impossible to say that housing benefit can never legitimately be spent on anything other than rent?” The magistrate tried to help her out as well (as he is bound to do), but instead we ended up with the defendant screaming about mandatory water charges in certain blocks of flats, and then bursting into tears.

The defendant soon abandoned that route and accused the witness of offering a plea bargain at the last hearing. Except the witness wasn’t at the last hearing. The defendant’s response? “Well, it was a short fat man, just like you, and it was easy to make a mistake”. The point won me over, at least.

The prosecution case closed, and the defendant started giving her own evidence. I have seen more coherent things written in faeces on the walls of grotty public toilets. But, the defendant can’t be blamed – she was in an incredibly frightening situation: the government is accusing you of a crime, there is no one to support you, no one to advise you, no one in your corner. It’s hard enough representing someone else, when you’re not emotionally invested in the case – imagine your liberty is on the line.

I must confess, I couldn’t hack listening to it any more. More and more, I wanted to get involved, to provide some kind of advice or representation – but as we all know, I’m just not qualified to do so, yet. So I had to leave the court. I was, frankly, angry at the way this poor woman was struggling.

So I went upstairs to Court 2 to watch the railway prosecutions (a mainstay at Tower Bridge Mags). The list was full of absent defendants – so I was going to watch the court deal, administratively, with 40 or 50 cases in a row, with the same result each time (found guilty in absence, fine, costs, victim surcharge, cost of the ticket that was avoided). I hoped that the simple humdrum repetitiveness would chill me out somewhat. It worked for 20 minutes or so – the magistrate thought I was a nutter for sitting down and watching something so mundane – but then a defendant actually showed up.

In these cases, the prosecutions are brought privately by the railway companies – the prosecutor is normally some office functionary who reads out their version of the facts – there’s no defendant to worry about, magistrate finds in their favour, everyone goes home.

When a defendant actually showed up, I could (almost literally) see the fear in the ‘prosecutor’s’ eyes. He wasn’t cut out for this. He was just an admin guy in a stripey jumper. Nonetheless, he pulled himself together and read out his version of the facts (on this occasion is was a bus service operated by the railway company). The judge asked the defendant to respond:

“Sir, I’m a law student at King’s College London. I was indeed travelling on the 171 Bus to Aldwych. I tapped my Oyster but didn’t see if the greenlight flashed or not. I also did not hear the beep as I was listening to my mp3 player. The driver did not stop me or point out to me in any way that my Oyster card had failed to validate. I naturally assumed all was okay, and got on with my journey. Ticket inspectors got on the bus at Elephant and Castle and said that I had not validated my Oyster, and I did argue with them. I offered to try validating it again but they did not let me do so. They asked for my name and address and said I would receive a court summons. I received the summons, and wrote to the company and asked them to disclose their CCTV for my inspection, so that I could prove that I did indeed attempt to validate the Oyster, and that I lacked the intent to avoid paying my fare. They did not respond and have not been willing to engage with me in any further discussion. So here I am today, and I’m happy to answer any questions you might have.”

The ‘prosecutor’ looked like he was going to die and asked for an adjournment. He went outside, and the defendant followed him. Two minutes later he came back in and said to the Magistrate:

“Sir, I have accepted payment of £1.35 in cash from the defendant, and now abandon this prosecution.”

Yes, all very funny – but I’d be willing to bet that the vast, vast majority of self-represented defendants act more like the first lady, than the second.

More fun with Eddie

Firstly, apologies for not updating in a week, no excuses other than laziness and interview preparation.

Secondly, the return of Eddie. As I said in my last post, on Monday I popped down to Kingston Crown Court to spend another day with the big man himself.

From the start Eddie promised me a boring, and short day, he had two hearings: a bail app and a sentence. In both cases he was acting for the Crown.

The bail app was due to be held at 10am, and the sentence at 11.30. All over and done with by 1pm, and then a quick lunch and a good chat.

Things never quite work out. The defence barrister in the bail app was suffering a family crisis and couldn't get to court before 11. The judge hearing the bail app was due to continue a part-heard trial as soon as the bail app was over. The defendant in the bail app had previously been refused bail because he lived too close to the complainant, and had spent the last few weeks in prison waiting for his family to find somewhere else for him to stay. If they didn't have the bail app, the defendant would remain in prison. Eddie's job? Despite acting for the Crown, to ask the judge to take a mid-morning break from his trial once the defence barrister turned up, as it would be in the interests of justice to hear a bail application for the defendant - even though it was the Crown's position that (irrespective of the address) bail should not be granted.

The judge granted the adjournment.

We now had to wait, both for the other barrister to turn up and for Eddie's other matter (the sentence) to be called on.

Can you guess what happened next? That's right. The other barrister turned up at 11.30. Eddie was called into the sentence and the bail app at the same time. Eek,

Luckily, the clerk in the sentencing court was understanding, called on another matter and gave Eddie breathing space to get the bail app out of the way. The bail app was simple enough, a new address was suggested, the owner of the property answered some questions from the judge, and even before Eddie had said anything, bail was granted.

So, off to the sentencing - a simple matter, a domestic burglary, two defendants caught leaving the front door of the property. Actually, no. Not simple.

Both defendants were represented by the same solicitors, and the solicitors had only instructed one barrister to represent both of them. Their previous instructions had highlighted no conflicts, so joint instruction seemed appropriate.

The problem, however, was that the pre-sentence reports had not been provided until the morning of the hearing, and they created a problem: for one of the defendants it recommended a community order, for the other, 18 months imprisonment. Also, it recommended a psychiatric report for one of the defendants (the one for whom imprisonment was recommended). Why the vast disparity in recommendations? One defendant had dozens of previous convictions, the other was of otherwise good character.

The PSRs also exposed a conflict between the two: although the defendants had made bare, guilty pleas, in their PSRs they blamed each other for the robberies. They both accepted that they were there, but both also said it was NOT a joint enterprise and that they led astray by the other. Thus, their barrister could not effectively mitigate for either of them.

A tricky situation.

The barrister was about to declare himself embarrassed and withdraw from the case completely, but Eddie offered him another way out. Eddie would request an adjournment to ensure the psychiatric report could be carried out, and the defence barrister could then sort out the conflict away from the eyes of the court.

Hooray for Eddie.

We were still out of court by 12.15, but it had been a much crazier morning than Eddie had been expecting. I learned a big lesson: even the most minor mention/hearing can cause problems.

Eddie and I headed into Kingston for our lunch, and had a good chat setting the world to rights. He even offered to buy me lunch, but knowing that Criminal Barristers live on 50p a day I just couldn't bring myself to accept.

The Return of Eddie

Going along to Kingston tomorrow to watch Eddie in action again. Looking forward to more of the 'coffee' in the robing room.

Apologies to the Republicans

But, my God, I've enjoyed all the patriotic flumpery over the last couple of weeks.

And now, we've got the utterly majestic Trooping the Colour. This is almost as good as the Morris Dancers a few weeks ago.

Better yet, the BBC has given us the option to turn off their utter-drivel- commentary via the red button. License fee well spent!

Interview Number 1, and superstitions

In about 3 minutes I'll be getting off the bus. In 5 minutes I'll be walking up Fleet Street. In 10 minutes I'll be  knocking on the door of my first interview. In 20 minutes (or so), that interview will probably be over.

In my interviews last year I developed a superstition: before interviews I ate a KitKat Dream, a Bourneville dark chocolate, and drank a bottle of orange Lucozade.

My superstition is not healthy. The sugar content alone could bring down a mammoth. The superstition developed because, on the way to one of my first rounds last year, I felt as if I desperately needed sugar. These things happen. So I bought the first things I saw. After the interview, I was invited to a second round, and my insanity was born.

All week ladyfemale has been trying to dissuade me from "this nonsense". She's lucked out: this early in the morning I really don't think I can force myself to eat a week's worth of sugar.

Further, I realised how ridiculous hanging on to a superstition from last year is: last year everything went wrong because of the horrendous "Set 3". Why on earth would I follow a pattern hoping to emulate that?

Once I'm out of the interview, I'll stick a post up on the Pupillage Pages about how it went.

Wish me luck!