The High Court, the Crown Court & Magistrates Court - Essay Example

Running head: The High Court, The Crown Court & Magistrates Court The High Court, The Crown Court & Magistrates Court [The of the writer appears here] [The name of institution appears here] Introduction Criminal trials in England and Wales take place at two levels. The most serious offences, such as murder, rape, and arson must be tried in the Crown Court, a unitary court, which is part of the Supreme Court and is a superior court of record. Trials in the Crown Court are presided over by a judge, who may be a High Court judge, a circuit judge, a recorder, or an assistant recorder. If the accused pleads not guilty the judge empanels a jury of twelve citizens chosen at random from the electoral roll. The judge is responsible for the conduct of the trial, questions of law, and sentencing. The jury decides on the guilt or innocence of the defendant. All offences which can be tried in the Crown Court are known as indictable offences. The most serious indictable offences which must be tried in the Crown Court are known as indictable-only offences. There are other indictable offences, such as theft, which can, but need not, be tried in the Crown Court. These are known as either-way offences. Below the Crown Court, at the lowest rung of the criminal court hierarchy, are the inferior magistrates' courts. Proceedings in magistrates' courts are presided over either by a bench of lay justices of the peace, who sit with a legally qualified clerk, or by a legally qualified stipendiary magistrate. Magistrates' courts try the either-way offences which are not tried in the Crown Court and also summary offences. These are crimes created by statute which must be tried by a magistrates' court. An either-way offence cannot be tried in a magistrates' court unless the accused assents to this and a magistrates' court agrees that the summary procedure is appropriate. If the accused does not consent or the magistrates' court vetoes a summary trial the offence must be tried on indictment in the Crown Court regardless of whether the accused intends to plead guilty or not guilty. The only effect of a guilty plea is to make it unnecessary to empanel a jury in the Crown Court. Occasionally an accused who is tried and convicted in a magistrates' court is committed for sentence to the Crown Court. In the majority of cases the court which convicts an accused also sentences him. High Court Her Majesty's High Court of Justice (usually known more simply as the High Court) is, together with the Crown Court and the Court of Appeal, part of the Supreme Court of Judicature of England and Wales (which under the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, is to be known as the Senior Courts of England and Wales). It deals at first instance with all the most high value and high importance cases, and also has a supervisory jurisdiction over all subordinate courts and tribunals. Appeal from the High Court in civil matters lies to the Court of Appeal and thence to the House of Lords, except when the High Court is sitting as a Prize Court when appeal lies to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The High Court is based at the Royal Courts of Justice on The Strand, in central London. However, it also sits as 'District Registries' all across England and Wales and virtually all proceedings in the High Court may be issued and heard at a district registry. It is headed by the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales. By convention, all of its male judges are made Knights Bachelor, while all of its female ones are made Dames Commander of the British Empire. The High Court is split into three main divisions: the Queen's Bench Division, the Chancery Division and the Family Division. The Supreme Court Costs Office is the part of the High Court that deals with legal costs and falls outside these divisions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Court_of_Justice If we look at the standard works of constitutional law, the only thing that is agreed is that judicial independence means that High Court judges may not be dismissed without an address by both Houses of Parliament. What this itself means is less than clear. Probably the most extensive, as well as the most recent, analysis of what is meant by judicial independence is contained in the 1991 edition of Smith and Bailey on the Modern English Legal System. Muir Mackenzie established the reputation of the Office as guardian of the legal profession and 'administrator' of the judiciary. These were not easy times. Perhaps the best example of the way he operated was his dealings in the first few years in implementing the Judicature Acts. Those Acts established the Court of Appeal, retained the judicial functions of the House of Lords, merged the common law divisions, purported to merge the substantive systems of common law and equity, and established a High Court. The actual implementation was highly complex; while we tend to think about the legislation, it was the Statutory Instruments and the informal decisions that actually shaped the way the English legal system would develop. Obviously the most important actors were the two branches of the profession and the judges themselves, but the Cabinets--particularly Liberal Cabinets--had strong views; and Muir Mackenzie was no mere cipher. The High Court judges had traditionally regarded themselves as in a defensive position where their salaries and generous non-contributory pensions were concerned. When they were put on salary in 1825 it meant a reduction from the remarkable perquisites they had received from fees and the sale of offices. The puisne judges' 5,500 was cut to 5,000 in 1832. Yet they found themselves having to defend even their 5,000 p.a. In 1873 Gladstone had had the audacity to suggest a cut to 4,000 p.a., writing to his Lord Chancellor that 'not only their salaries but also their pensions were extravagantly high'. 60 The judges were furious. When invited to comment on the Judicature Bill, then before Parliament, and designed totally to restructure the legal system, most judges limited their comments to the rumor that their salaries were going to be cut. They were outraged. As Chief Justice Bovill of Common Pleas pointed out, 'since the judges' salaries were fixed everything, especially house rents, servants and horses, have become very much more expensive. The pressure forced Gladstone to withdraw his suggestion. At least, however, it is arguable that during the nineteenth century the value of the High Court judges' salaries did not decline. The concept of the cost of living over time is a complex issue. If one means by it the composite cost of a group of consumables, it is arguable that the cost of living actually dropped between 1825 and 1900. What is equally clear is that there was a dramatic increase of 250 per cent in the cost of living between 1900 and 1920. The judges--especially when tax was taken into account--really were suffering a serious diminution in status. In the early 1920s, it looked for a while as if the High Court judges might actually receive an increase. The judges had hit the night ear. The Lord Chancellor, Birkenhead, always spent more than he earned, thought he should be paid far more, ideally tax-free, and was thus sympathetic to the plea. He persuaded Austen Chamberlain that a large increase in income was in order. Schuster reported that the two had agreed on a 1,500 permanent increase. 66 In consulting the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Chief Secretary of Ireland, Chamberlain said he was proposing a 30 per cent increase for English High Court judges and a 25 per cent increase for appeal judges. It was left to Schuster and Sir Warren Fisher at the Treasury to work out the total scheme, including 'lesser judicial luminaries', for the Cabinet. In fact the memorandum produced for the Cabinet, while it set out the arguments of the judges, was probably not a profound debating document. The Treasury had had the Inland Revenue sample the earnings of leading counsel. It turned out that in 1920-1, these averaged some 6,814. When contrasted with the High Court's 5,000 p.a. and a particularly attractive non-contributory pension (50 per cent of salary after fifteen years), not to mention the prestige and the knighthood, the contrast was hardly persuasive. Indeed, it suggested that the Lord Chancellor was still in a buyer's market as far as recruiting High Court judges was concerned. The 1920s were a time when the High Court judges were not so foolhardy as to question their comfortable salaries and pensions, with the cost of living dropping and the Bar, at best, erratic in its prosperity. Not asking for more, however, was one thing; a cut was another. With the collapse of 1931 the High Court judges were required, along with all public servants, to take a cut in their salaries. The National Economy Act and a related Order in Council cut the salaries of all judges--including High Court and County Court judges, whose salaries were charged on the Consolidated Fund rather than being dependent on an annual vote of Parliament. High Court judges were on a different footing from civil servants and members of the armed forces. They were not to be put in a category even with County Court judges and metropolitan magistrates. On appointment to the bench they suffered great pecuniary sacrifices. The Crown Court The Crown Court is a new body. Although two prototype Crown Courts had been created in 1956 in Liverpool and Manchester to handle local work, the Crown Court proper became a national institution only in January 1972. It was engendered by the Courts Act 1971, that Act being a response to recommendations made in the 1969 report of a Royal Commission chaired by Dr Richard Beeching and established to examine and reform the administration of justice in general and the system of assize and quarter sessions courts in particular. Beeching had been the chairman of the British Railways Board between 1963 and 1965, and he was celebrated principally for his 'modernization' of the rail network. Just as Beeching had reformed the railways, so he was to change the courts. His report described a 'patched', antiquated, and fragmented network of courts that were not always to be found in centres of population where they were needed, and were not in continual session. It complained about overloading in certain areas and, in London especially, about long waiting lists and organizational inefficiencies. It proposed rationalization and change: to replace the localized, 'labyrinthine structure of assizes and quarter sessions', there should be a new system and a new Court, the Crown Court, which would be marked by its 'convenience, quality and economy' (O'Malley T., 1993). Formally, the new Court was to be regarded as a single national body of superior jurisdiction that could sit at any centre and form as many courts at one location as necessary. It would be staffed by a new permanent bench of circuit judges and administered as a whole, as a new Unified Court Service, by the Lord Chancellor's Department (O'Malley T., 1993). The Crown Court was a single court which exclusively heard all cases on indictment and triable before a judge and jury. However, partly in response to public upset at the maladroit handling of a succession of rape cases, its work was also graded into classes of importance dictated by the Lord Chief Justice and approved by the Lord Chancellor. Not every case could be taken by every judge, and the Lord Chief Justice determined how the allocation was to be made. The most delicate, explosive, and difficult cases were handled only by senior judges, the least demanding by recorders and assistant recorders, the part-time judges and judges in training who had to be barristers or solicitors of at least ten years standing. There was a fourfold classification. Class 1 was the most serious and included treason, genocide, piracy, and murder cases which had to come before a High Court judge. Class 2 cases included rape, child destruction, abortion, and incest with a girl under 13, sedition, and manslaughter and they were tried generally by a High Court judge, although they could be released by a presiding judge to a circuit judge. Class 3 cases could be tried by any judge, and included all offences triable on indictment apart from those specifically allotted to the three other classes. Class 4 cases were normally tried by a circuit judge, recorder, or assistant recorder, and they covered grievous bodily harm, robbery, and conspiracy as well as more mundane offences and offences 'triable either way' in the Crown Court or Magistrates Court. The four classes formed a flat pyramid: of the 90,000 cases committed annually to the Crown Court in the late 1980s, some 0.6 per cent of cases fell into Class 1, 1.2 per cent into Class 2, 3.3 per cent into Class 3, and 95 per cent into Class 4. The vast bulk of Crown Court business consisted of burglaries, thefts, and assaults (O'Malley T., 1993). The largest and busiest of the six circuits, the South-Eastern, was so large that it had itself to be bifurcated into two divisions, London and the Provinces. It served a population of 17 million, handled nearly half the country's serious criminal cases, and was staffed by just under half of the 400 Circuit Judges working in England and Wales. By early 1990, there were eight Crown Court centres in London, seven being third-tier, one second-tier, and none first-tier. All murders and almost all rapes were committed automatically from the London magistrates' courts to the Old Bailey, leaving the other court centres to deal with the other 98 per cent of cases, the great mass of mundane criminal business. The Magistrates' Courts A Magistrates' Court or court of petty sessions, formerly known as a police court, is the lowest level of court in England and Wales and many other common law jurisdictions. A magistrates' court is presided over by a tribunal consisting of two or more (most commonly three) Justices of the Peace or by a District Judge (formerly known as a stipendiary magistrate), and dispenses summary justice, under powers usually limited by statute. The tribunal that presides over the Court is often referred to simply as the Bench. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magistrates%27_Court By the nineteenth century justices of the peace, as well as trying indictable offences in Quarter Sessions with a jury, tried hundreds of statutory offences, and, where statute permitted, indictable offences, out of sessions without a jury. Some of the statutory offences, such as rick-burning or the killing of game, were serious and were punishable by long terms of imprisonment or severe corporal punishment. Stipendiary magistrates, mainly in London, exercised a corresponding criminal jurisdiction. The opportunities for having decisions by petty sessions reviewed were better than for trials on indictment, even though the writ of error did not lie. This was because toward the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I the Queen's Bench allowed the writ of certiorari to issue to courts exercising summary jurisdiction to correct errors of law. In Groenvelt v. Burwell Holt CJ treated it as settled practice that certiorari lay for convictions before justices of the peace meeting out of sessions: 'It is a consequence of every inferior jurisdiction of record that their proceedings be removable into this court, to inspect the record and see whether they keep themselves within the limits of their jurisdiction.'Apart from the writ of certiorari, there were two other prerogative writs which could be used to control justices: mandamus and prohibition. Mandamus was used to compel justices to exercise their summary jurisdiction where they had wrongly declined it. Prohibition was a preventive remedy; it was used to restrain justices from acting without jurisdiction. Neither mandamus nor prohibition lay where justices had properly assumed jurisdiction: 'if they decided upon the merits . . . the legal merits, or the merits of the matters of fact, we cannot order them to rescind that decision. We are not a Court of Appeal from the decision of magistrates, and however erroneously they may have decided, we have no power to interfere' (Thomas, 1968). Certiorari could be combined after conviction with the writ of habeas corpus, the famous remedy for illegal detention. Habeas corpus on its own was not an efficacious remedy because it only allowed the warrant of commitment to prison, which was generally valid, to be questioned. To appeal from one set of magistrates to another set of magistrates was not an attractive proposition. Justices often resented appeals and did their best to discourage them. Most convicted persons were poor. They could not provide the recognizance and sureties demanded of them by the magistrates to prosecute the appeal, the prosecution's costs which would be awarded against them should they fail, 38 or their own costs which they often had to pay even if the appeal was successful. The defendant who appealed to Quarter Sessions had to set out the grounds of appeal in writing within seven days and serve it on the other party and the clerk to the justices. A simple statement that the accused was 'not guilty of the said offence' sufficed, nevertheless the requirement tended to discourage appeals by those who could not afford a lawyer (Thomas D., 1968(. Solicitors had no right of audience at Quarter Sessions so a barrister had to be briefed by anyone not wishing to represent himself. Figures presented by the Home Secretary to the House of Commons in 1860 showed that few convicted persons exercised their statutory rights of appeal to Quarter Sessions, which existed at that time. There was no increase in the proportion of appellants who appealed until well into the twentieth century. The right of appeal to Quarter Sessions is described as 'purely illusory' because of its prohibitive cost in a textbook published in 1915. Sir Montague Sharp, Chairman of Middlesex Sessions, complained to The Times in 1927 about the short notice period and the sureties which had to be found and Lord Atkin, in an address to the Magistrates' Association in 1930, spoke of the appeal arrangements as old-fashioned and really quite unjustifiable'. 'The truth of the matter is that it is only relatively rich men who can appeal at all from the justices. The poor are incapacitated from doing so; they are tied up by regulations which are sometimes so technically administered as to amount to a perfect scandal. Out of 8,000 persons convicted at courts of Assize and Quarter Sessions in 1930 442 appealed to the Court of Criminal Appeal compared with 314 appeals to Quarter Sessions from 520,000 persons who suffered summary conviction. 44 The two other available remedies--judicial review and appeal by case stated--were of no greater practical importance to the vast majority of those convicted in magistrates' courts. A defendant who was not legally represented might not be aware of these remedies. As in the case of appeal to Quarter Sessions, a person who challenged his conviction could be required to enter into a recognizance to prosecute the appeal with sureties. Legal representations, which meant a solicitor and barrister, was a practical necessity; the procedures bristled with technical difficulties (Thomas D., 1968). Magistrate Judges or District Judge are always assisted by a professional legal adviser or Clerk to the Justices, whose role it is to ensure that procedures are adhered to and that the Bench is properly directed as to the law and its powers, as well as to see that the Courts' business is dealt with efficiently. Unsurprisingly, the Clerk's role is far more significant where lay Magistrates are presiding because they are not legally trained and so require more advice on legal matters than a District Judge. The Clerk ought not to exert any influence upon the Bench - the advice which they provide must be neutral - but nevertheless the advice of the Clerk carries considerable weight. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magistrates%27_Court Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magistrates%27_Court http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Court_of_Justice Thomas D., 1968. "'Appellate Review of Sentences and the Development of Sentencing Policy: The English Experience'" 20 Alabama Law Review, 193. O'Malley T., 1993. 'Prosecution Appeals Against Sentence' 11 Irish Law Times 121. Read More