First published in Great Britain in 2015 by
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The right of Jessica Jacobson, Gillian Hunter and Amy Kirby to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act.
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Epigraph
When Gregory says, Are they guilty? he means, Did they do it? But when he [Cromwell] says, Are they guilty? he means, Did the court find them so? The lawyers world is entire unto itself, the human pared away. It was a triumph, in a small way, to unknot the entanglement of thighs and tongues, to take that mass of heaving flesh and smooth it on to white paper: as the body, after climax, lies back on white linen.
Thomas Cromwell reflecting on the process of having Anne Boleyns alleged lovers convicted of treason; from Hilary Mantels Bring Up the Bodies (Fourth Estate, 2012).
Most nights her dad left the house again after dinner to meet with poor people he was defending in court for little or no money... In tenth grade, for a school project, Patty sat in on two trials that her dad was part of. One was a case against an unemployed Yonkers man who drank too much on Puerto Rican Day, went looking for his wifes brother, intending to cut him with a knife, but couldnt find him and instead cut up a stranger in a bar. Not just her dad but the judge and even the prosecutor seemed amused by the defendants haplessness and stupidity. They kept exchanging little not-quite winks. As if misery and disfigurement and jail time were all just a lower-class side-show designed to perk up their otherwise boring day.
On the train ride home, Patty asked her dad whose side he was on.
Ha, good question, he answered. You have to understand, my client is a liar. The victim is a liar. And the bar owner is a liar. Theyre all liars. Of course, my client is entitled to a vigorous defense. But you have to try to serve justice, too. Sometimes the PA and the judge and I are working together as much as the PA is working with the victim or Im working with the defendant. Youve heard of our adversarial system of justice?
Yes.
Well. Sometimes the PA and the judge and I all have the same adversary. We try to sort out the facts and avoid a miscarriage. Although dont, uh. Dont put that in your paper.
Teenager Pattys view of the work of her defence attorney father; from Jonathan Franzens Freedom (Harper Collins, 2010).
Contents
There are many people who helped us with this work. We must thank Her Majestys Courts and Tribunals Service for granting permission to conduct research in the Crown Court and the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas (then President of the Queens Bench Division), for his support for the study. Thanks are due also to the resident judges of the two Crown Courts featured in this book, the national charity Victim Support, the National Offender Management Service and the Crown Prosecution Service for helping us gain access to victims, witnesses, defendants and legal professionals to interview for this study. We are especially indebted to the court users the victims, witnesses and defendants who agreed to talk to us, in great detail, about their often upsetting and stressful experiences of Crown Court and the circumstances which occasioned their visits there. We would also like to thank all the professionals and practitioners who participated in research interviews.
We are grateful to Professor Mike Hough and Dr Tim McSweeney at the Institute for Criminal Policy Research for their contribution to the development of this study. We wish to thank a number of people who assisted us with the preparation of this manuscript; they include Professor Penny Darbyshire, Gemma Davies, Dr Deborah Golden, and Victoria Pittman, our editor at Policy Press all of whom offered their expertise and helpful comments on earlier drafts. Thanks are also due to Christopher Tomlinson for producing the colour illustrations for the book cover and Sufi Gaffar for the graphics in Chapter 2.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Economic and Social Research Council, who funded the study on which this book is based.
The Crown Court deals with under 10% of criminal cases that come before the courts in England and Wales: the vast majority of cases both begin and end in magistrates courts. Nevertheless, the centrality of the Crown Court to the criminal justice system is clear: its daily business is the prosecution and sentencing of the most serious forms of criminality.
The Crown Court also occupies a significant place in the public imagination. The courtroom drama is a staple of popular entertainment, reflecting the fact that the real-life happenings in court are indeed a drama. They are dramatic because they are focused on extreme, and often harrowing and tragic, events in otherwise ordinary lives. But the drama of the courtroom inheres also in its very structures and processes: in the adversarial system which pits alleged offender against alleged victim; in the ritual and formality of the wigs, the gowns and the archaic modes of speech and interaction; and in the performances of barristers seeking to impress judges and juries with their eloquence, passion and sophisticated understanding of the intricacies of the law.
The study
This book presents the findings of a 20-month qualitative study of the Crown Court, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. Through extensive interviews with victims, witnesses and defendants; interviews with professionals and practitioners who work in or around court; and many hours of observation of court hearings, the study set out to address three broad questions:
What are the essential features of the Crown Court process, as it is experienced by victims, witnesses and defendants?
