What happens before the jury enter the courtroom…

Welcome to Week 5 of the court visit breakdown!

As usual here is your backstory:

This was a Crown Court proceeding
I observed the pre- trial deliberations between defence, prosecution and judge, before the trial began
This was mainly to discuss what the defence and prosecution were both happy with the jury hearing, and any applications that should be made
The defendant had been charged with Assault occasioning ABH and threats to kill (against his partner)

So, to preface this blog post, a significant challenge as a member of the public gallery is to try to follow what the court is talking about when you do not have the relevant documents. This was particularly difficult on this occasion.

The main point of contention during this pre-trial hearing was the application for defendant bad character, made by the prosecution. A skeleton for this application was sent to the defence barrister and judge that morning, which is extremely late for an application to be made (which was noted by the judge that usually this would not be allowed). This is where is got quite challenging as of course I could not see the document they were referring to.

The prosecution wanted to submit the bad character evidence of the defendant through his previous convictions, 15 CAD calls (police callouts) and criminal damage. In some ways the judge did shutdown all the arguments that the prosecution was attempting to make (which as a viewer did make it very interesting), however, he did reiterate that he is open minded and willing to hear any oppositions.

The prosecution was aiming to bring in the criminal damage (the breaking of a television and punching walls), in order to show how aggressive the defendant can be when he is angry. However, the judge explained that where the defendant had admitted to breaking the television, it now became a matter of ownership rather than whether he did it or not. This is because if the defendant had ‘lawful excuse’ (as per the Criminal Damage Act 1971) then he would not have committed criminal damage. The defendant argued that he had ownership of the TV and therefore, gave himself consent to break it, resulting in a lawful excuse.

In terms of the 15 CAD calls, some of them were callouts due to the actions of the complainant (the defendant’s wife) Therefore, there would have to be a non-defendant bad character application as well, which the judge struggled to see why the prosecution would want this. The prosecution argued that although it would not look good for the complainant, the barrister felt that it would be unfair for the jury to believe that this assault was a one-off incident, when in reality it had happened many times before. The judge felt that in order to include the callouts, it is only fair to include the ones pertaining the complainant also.

Lastly, the judge spoke on the previous convictions of the defendant. He explained that there would have to be more of a relevant reason to use them in this case, than just that they were to do with violence. He went on to say that just because the defendant had gotten drunk and punched a stranger, does not mean he would then punch his domestic partner when he is drunk also. Both the judge and the defence were particularly concerned that this would amount to satellite litigation (this is a side issue that arises during the main lawsuit, where it could distract, as it does not directly refer to the core of the case)

One final issue outside of the bad character application, was that the complainant was now going to be regarded as a hostile witness. This is where the witness is going to be uncooperative or simply refuse to answer questions once put on the stand. The prosecution explained that the complainant did not want the proceedings to continue and therefore, is unlikely to answer any questions.

The judge empathised with the barristers in regard to the amount of information that they need to think about, and allowed them 30 minutes to reflect and come back with a decision as to the application.

After a 30-minute break I re-entered the public gallery. The prosecution began with her decision to remove the previous convictions of the defendant, only include 9 of the police callouts (including both the defendant and complainants’ ones) and to remove the criminal damage. She did however, run it past the judge that she is going to still mention that the defendant punches walls when he is angry, in order to show his aggression (this was agreed by the judge). This was subsequently agreed with by the defence.

Once this decision had been made, the barristers and judge momentarily ran through how they expect the trial to go. They felt it would be no longer than 2 days, simply calling to the stand the complainant, defendant and the individual who has edited the body worn footage from the police callouts. The reason this has been edited, is to not include the part of the footage that shows anything that has not been admitted into court. For example, in this case they were not bringing the defendant’s child onto the stand, therefore did not want to include anything the child had said, which is then edited out before it is shown to the jury.

These were my observations for the pre-trial hearing of this case. As you can see it can get very confusing, especially when you are not provided the application and exact reasoning for the bad character, as well as a lot of legal terminology and different laws. However, I hope you found this informative and enjoyable!

See you next week!