Cases collapsed in chaos at Basildon and Southend courts
Last year, the Labour government announced plans to remove many defendants’ rights to jury trials, allowing lone judges to declare them guilty and jail them for up to three years.
It was part of a raft of measures – which also include increasing lay magistrates’ sentencing powers and removing defendants’ rights of appeal – supposedly designed to help tackle the backlog of unheard crown court trials.
The proposals have provoked widespread outrage and disgust, not least because pretty much every expert in the land agrees they will have a negligible impact, if any, on reducing the backlog.
Rather, they say, the delays are caused by decades of chronic underfunding: dilapidated buildings; barristers fleeing the profession; a legal aid service which fails to pay barristers for prep time, meaning they often meet their clients moments before they are due in court to represent them, resulting in last-minute revelations and avoidable adjournments.
Over two days this week, I experienced firsthand a series of collapsed hearings.
Every single case I tried to cover at Southend and Basildon crown courts ended up not proceeding.
On Tuesday morning, I arrived at Southend for the Hollie Dance GBH trial but found security stood at the entrance turning everybody away.
A hot water pump had sprung a leak overnight, caused a flood and all the electrics were out.
Every case in the building – which houses crown, magistrates’ and county courts – had to be cancelled.
In the magistrates’ courts alone there had been eight trials listed, with charges including domestic violence, failing to stop after a road accident and inflicting grievous bodily harm.
I diverted to Basildon Crown Court just in time for the sentencing of an Iraqi asylum seeker who had been living in Basildon after entering the UK illegally on three separate occasions.
Around two-thirds of the way through the hearing, his Arabic interpreter – beaming in remotely –started swaying and collapsed forward, landing headfirst on her laptop.
The sound of her laboured breathing filled the courtroom until the link went dead.
Needless to say, that hearing had to be aborted.
A collapsed interpreter was a first for everybody present, but what followed were sadly very familiar and avoidable delays.
Next up was a defendant due to be arraigned on charges of making repeated false reports to Essex Police.
I had attended their previous plea hearing weeks earlier, where they hadn’t showed up. A warrant had been issued for their arrest.
At their rescheduled hearing, it became clear they hadn’t turned up again – but how could that be?
It transpired that after their arrest, they’d been released on bail.
Another warrant had to be issued and that courtroom then sat empty.
That afternoon, an alleged serial stalker was due to enter pleas – but instead, his defence barrister asked for an adjournment to have him psychiatrically assessed over concerns he was not fit to plead.
Another courtroom then sat empty.
The following morning, Southend's courthouse remained out of action.
But one defence barrister had a long-standing personal appointment, known about from the outset of the trial, which meant the jury couldn’t hear any evidence.
After welcoming them to their new courtroom and explaining that the trial will now run into a third and potentially fourth week, the jurors were sent home with instructions to return the following morning.
That was an unavoidable delay – but more avoidable delays would follow.
I headed up the corridor to sit in the sentencing of a Basildon drug dealer, but it had been listed in error. It was reserved to one judge but mistakenly listed in front of another.
Another empty courtroom.
That afternoon, a Southend man was due to be sentenced after indicating guilty pleas in the lower court to charges including dangerous driving, possessing Class A drugs and being armed with a machete in a public place.
But having only met her client minutes before the hearing, the defence barrister came into court and requested an eight-week adjournment to have her client psychiatrically evaluated.
He was released on bail and his sentence put back to the end of May.
Hours and hours of wasted court time – and not one of the delays would have been avoided by Labour’s proposed attack on jury trials.
