What happens when you refuse to attend court…
Welcome to Week 3 of Court Visit Breakdown!
Here is the backstory:
I attended Crown Court
The defendant is being held in prison on remand for the assault of a police officer:
o Assault occasioning actual bodily harm (racially aggravated)
o Intentional strangulation (racially aggravated)
o Using threatening or abusive words or behaviour (racially aggravated)
The court proceedings never actually began unfortunately, but I learnt some interesting procedural information
So today I sat in the public gallery ready to observe a trial. This trial had been described as ‘pre-heard’ on the court listing, so I knew that the trial had already began (however, you can still usually grasp many of the facts)
After hearing the case be announced on the tannoy, I walked into the courtroom and watched the judge enter. Here is when the defence barrister explained that the defendant will not be attending the court. Before the jury can enter the defendant must already be present, therefore, I was not able to even see the jury on this occasion.
The reason as to why the defendant was not going to be attending trial, was because he had been refused his ADHD medication, initially thought, by the prison. Both the Court Clerk and the defence and prosecuting barristers had received a refusal notice from the prison, where the defendant had attempted to explain that he was refused his medication, and would not be able to spend a whole day in court without it. Alongside this, the court itself had refused to give him the medication whilst he had his trial.
This had been explained to the judge. It was interesting to see what the judge would decide to do next. He was very persistent that the court clerk was to get in touch with the prison, and figure out the exact reason as to why the defendant is not present at trial. He wanted to know exactly whether the decision was down to the defendant or the prison/court. This is where the judge’s role ended and he left the court.
From this point on observing the courtroom, hearing both the barristers interact as well as the court clerk, it gave a very good insight into how situations, that have not been anticipated, are to be dealt with, as well as the specific duties that are required of the court clerk (as a lot of the next steps were completed by him).
After a lot of waiting and back and forth phone calls from the clerk to the prison, it emerged that the defendant had previously refused his medication 6 times within the past 3 weeks, the court were not able to provide the defendant with the medication as it is a controlled drug, and the defendant had been offered the medication by the prison pharmacy, the defendant had taken the medication and himself refused to go to court. This clearly differed from the original refusal notice; therefore, a new one was to be issued explaining the reason for the refusal.
From what I could gather (silently listening to the barrister’s chatter) the planned court proceedings for this day was to listen to the questioning of the police officer that had been assaulted (explained as the ‘main event’ by prosecution). Could this be the reason why the defendant did not want to come to court?
In preparation for speaking with the judge to decide the outcome, either the trial will be adjourned (the judge made it clear this would only be for 1 day) or the trial would continue without the presence of the defendant, the barristers looked into the Criminal Procedure Rules. Here the court would be relying on Criminal Procedure Rule 25.2(1)(b) where the ‘court must not proceed if the defendant is absent, unless the court is satisfied that the defendant has waived the right to attend, and the trial will be fair despite the defendant’s absence’. In order for this to happen the defence barrister was entitled to a conversation with the defendant, to inform him that trial is able to continue without his presence (as he was the one refusing to attend) and how he felt in regard to this.
So, that was the main observations I made from this day in trial. Although, not too exciting in terms of face-to-face questioning of witnesses and defendant, it definitely improved my knowledge (and hopefully yours) as to the procedural elements of court, and the specifics of different job roles around the court (like the clerk).
See you next week!