In the morning we went to the Old Bailey Crown Court. This is where appeals happen in England. We were able to sit in on a case, unlike some of the courts in the US all court hearings are open for public viewing. The case we sat in on was delayed because they apparently couldn't find one of the defendants? We waited for about 20 minutes and then the defendants entered. The judges must have had their minds made up at this point because one of the barristers(lawyer with a wig) stood up to present his argument but the judge said that they had reviewed the case, knew the facts and made their decision. So the barrister sat down and the judge read the facts of the case which turns out that it was an assault. There were three defendants and the judge said that they reviewed the case and would reduce their sentence from 3 years to 2. Some of the defendant's family was there and I thought they were going jump for joy when they heard that. The case took place back in 2012 so they will probably get time served and be out soon.
After we left the court my roommates and I headed over to ISA to work on our blogs and upload pictures. The internet at the hotel took forever to load anything. Hence why I did my blog in 3 day chunks and I'm still playing catch up now that I'm home.
While we were at ISA we attended a lecture from a Professor of Comparative Criminal Justice from Kings College. I really enjoyed the lecture and Dr. MacManus answered a lot of the questions we accumulated while in London. He also did a great job of explaining how the legal system works in England. Some things that I found interesting: plea bargaining is used less, they use joint enterprise (no matter what your involvement in the crime was your all get the same charges and be tried together) and there are no set statutes only case law.
This lecture was great because it answered so many questions and gave me good info for the final paper.
No comments:
Post a Comment