Frances Gibb, in The Times, covers a piece of legal history this morning: Case of ‘Heathrow four’ to be challenged as lone judge prepares for historic trial.
“Defence lawyers are preparing to challenge the first criminal trial in England and Wales for 400 years to go ahead without a jury. The case is expected to be heard next week. Lawyers for four men accused of being part of a gang that stole £1.75 million in a raid at Heathrow will seek to adjourn the trial and go before the Supreme Court, the highest in the land. They argue that the case is of public importance and that the men were denied the chance to rebut the allegations against them or to challenge the direction for a trial by judge. The decision that there should be a a judge-only trial was made by the Lord Chief Justice and two other judges in an historic ruling at the Court of Appeal in June.”
The case is interesting for a great many reasons, not least since it will be the first non-jury criminal trial since the days of the Diplock courts in Northern Ireland. The jury-less trial is the first of its kind under the provisions contained in the Criminal Justice Act 2003 to prevent jury nobbling. The trial is expected to be rather shorter than a traditional jury trial, barristers will probably have to alter their presentation style – the judge will have access to all the witness statements, something denied to juries and, as Frances Gibb reports…“Mr Justice Treacy will be both judge and jury: he will resolve matters of law and have to do “mental gymnastics”, as one barrister put it, if he excludes evidence as inadmissable — trying to put it out of his mind and to pretend he has never seen it.”
10,000 own up to ‘morally unacceptable’ tax evasion
Stephen Timms, the Treasury Minister, (Not pictured left – that is Al Capone – a celebrated gangster and serial tax evader) today branded offshore tax evasion “morally unacceptable” today, as HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) announced that about 10,000 people came forward to declare money in offshore accounts before the UK tax amnesty deadline on Monday. Mr Timms said: “Hiding money in offshore accounts to evade tax is economically and morally unacceptable. It robs public services of funding and places an unfair burden on the honest majority of taxpayers. Times
Accountants will tell you that tax evasion is illegal (and, by definition morally unacceptable) whereas tax avoidance is legal and, arguably, morally acceptable. Given that there are believed to be some 100,000 offshore tax ‘evader/avoiders’ getting 10,000 of them to cough up can hardly be described as a triumph. Those who did cough (and 1000 did on the day of the deadline expiry – 4th January) will have to pay the tax due, the interest, and a fine of 10%. Those who are now caught will have a fine of 100% of the tax due – although HM government plan to increase this in the future to 200%.
This prompted one ‘Outraged of Lichtenstein’ tax payer to comment on the Times article:
Richard Koenig wrote: “No Mr Trimms. What is “morally unacceptable”is bankrupt, inefficient, feckless governments stealing from their citizenry. What is “morally unacceptable” is extorting other countries who have efficient markets and competitive tax environments. No one minds paying reasonable tax, but the UK has now entered levels of taxation that are an affront to hard work, talent and life’s blessings. Peaple (sic) like Trimms make me sick.”
Founder of Oink music piracy site ‘had $300,000 in bank’
The Times reports: A man who ran a pirate music website amassed hundreds of thousands of pounds in “donations” from people who had downloaded 21 million songs, a jury heard yesterday. The trial continues – but it is interesting because it appears, at first blush, given that the alleged ‘pirate’ did not host any copyright material himself to be a case under the new Fraud Act – which contains a very wide definition of fraud. I make no further comment – but it would be interesting if criminal or intellectual property lawyers reading this would give an insight into what could be a landmark decision in criminal law?
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Watchdog accused of ducking confrontation over MPs’ expenses
Sir Ian Kennedy, a well known academic lawyer, (Ex King’s College London)heads the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority – and IPSA is certainly keen to get members of the public involved in the consultation process. You may access the IPSA consultation document here and complete it online: The consultation document is available for completion online.
There is gold in them thar Google hills – and, with the launch of the new Google Nexus phone – the lawyers are about with the first piece of litigation. I have to say that I did not immediately 
A raft of political stuff…
There are many articles on the politics of the week. I have listed these in the news feed on Insite Law this morning. I do no more than list them. I have commented on some earlier in the week – even if just to do a caption pic or a cartoon and the political bloggers do comment and analysis with style and vituperation.
Hey ho, hey ho…. it’s off to court Trafigura go
Trafigura returns to court in attempt to suppress lawsuit documents
“Trafigura, the offshore oil trader that became notorious for legal attempts to suppress reporting of parliament, is going back to Britain’s judges tomorrow. The privately owned oil giant wants high court records to be sealed to prevent the public and the media from reading allegations made in a separate lawsuit.” The Guardian
After the superinjunction fiasco late last year when Trafigura and Carter-Ruck, their lawyers, were effectively forced to back down by mass civil disobedience on twitter and elsewhere – they have a new strategy – get the courts to seal the court records to stop nosy people poking their noses into Trafigura business. A cunning plan. We shall see what our Courts make of this given that the superinunctions were criticised by no less than the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge.
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“The DCMS minister Sion Simon has been speaking for the government in the Commons this afternoon, and is in an embarrassing situation: it appears that government lawyers have advised that the Video Recordings Act 1984 should have been notified to the European Commission under the “Technical Standards” Directive, 83/189 (since replaced by Directive 98/34). Since it was not, its provisions are unenforceable; the government has therefore now notified, and by means of the Video Recordings Bill is repealing and reenacting the 1984 provisions. The bill is going through in effect in a day. Oops!”
Capitalists@Work ask: Will a failed Brown-out lead to UK blockout?
“The events at Westminster yesterday make the comic The Thick of It, look quite tame in its parody. Some now quite pathetic ex-ministers hope a simple letter will be enough to get rid of a tenacious and street-fighting Prime Minister. That the plot failed is not much of a surprise, neither the the lack of solid backing for Brown by his enemies. Brown too did not have the stomach to go for a vote and therefore renew his mandate ahead of an election and get a boost for his personal rating as he would be seen as a toughie.
But the real cost to the country is the on-going collapse of the UK credibility in the eyes of the world. Check out what has happened the past month alone…..”
Prof John Flood over at RATs (Random Academic Thoughts has a fascinating piece on his blog: Do You Know What Lawyers Do?
John Bolch at Family Lore covers the ‘Medieval’ System of Family Law in this country and is quite sardonic with this: “The Independent this morning informs us that “an overwhelming majority of lawyers have told the Government” that the divorce system must be reformed, to provide for no-fault divorce. I’m not quite sure who these lawyers are or when they told this to the Government, but the report goes on to tell us that: “Lawyers told the consumer law website TakeLegalAdvice.com that families would suffer far less during the separation if the husband and wife did not have to cite unreasonable behaviour or one of the other grounds for a quick divorce.”
Read…
And finally…
Being Friday… I write a ‘Rive Gauche’ piece…coming slightly from left field… I shall do so later…but I shall leave you with this picture from Conservative Flickr to which I have added a, possibly, welcome/unwelcome caption…
Charon QC 
luxembourg is full of people (or possibly peaple – maybe it was micheal howeierd?) with attitudes like that. best place for them – a featureless hole in the middle of europe. did germany actually bother invading? they all seem to bugger off because the uk ‘bleeds them dry’ on tax. wonder what they would think of french national insurance rates! funny how france got top ranking for quality of life. must go and have a wonder about that.
Gosh, Teesside Crown Court – that takes me back to when I was an articled clerk. At the cutting edge of copyright law. Which type of fraud is alleged here, I wonder? There doesn’t seem to be a false representation, no failure to disclose information and no obvious abuse of position. I imagine that most of the people who gave him money knew perfectly well what they were doing.
This *should* amount to dealing in infringing copies, but ever since Napster (under US copyright law) it has been apparent that there’s a lacuna in copyright law when it comes to someone facilitating filesharing. The law just isn’t up to dealing with this sort of thing and there doesn’t seem to be a political will to change it – efforts are focussed on deterring th people who share the files rather than the facilitators: not an illogical approach, but a bit too indirect to inspire confidence.
Wasn’t there a conspiracy going on here? Might that have been a better way to bring charges? Difficult, but more appropriate perhaps.
Peter – Don’t know enough about the case yet – but interesting.
The Heathrow 4. The end of jury trial? Maybe. Calvert-Smith J thought that a jury could be protected but the appeal court disagreed and questions of “resources” appear to have influenced the latter. Judge only trials do not command the same public confidence as trial by jury. The Diplock-courts experience demonstrated this. It is to be hoped that lack of resources will not become a mantra to enable more and more non-jury trials.
Perhaps there is a need to consider some alternatives such as anonymous juries as used in some US States. It is also interesting to note how the length of criminal trials has increased since the 1960s. Are 6 month trials really necessary? Even the Great Train Robbery case took just over 2 months.
By the way @Geeklawyer has just bought a Google Nexus One phone. He should be able to give you an informed comment, if the bloody thing works.
Thanks too for the mention!
John – I shall investigate. Delighted..always enjoy your posts….
lichtenstein – luxembourg: it really is a toss-up as to whether my reading or geography is worse. i do however know where teeside is – you can smell it from where i was brought up. i imagine the conspiracy to defraud case is much like the pirate bay case. there are going to be more and more of these because of the bloody awful 2004/48 (no ok i won’t start).
at the risk of slipping on ice as i clamber onto yet another of my soapboxes (in a surreal wintry john major tribute), i wonder whether a full no-fault divorce would balance out the effects of dave’s proposed tax break for the married.
of course i am bound to hate it as it is a tory policy, but i do object as an unmarried person bringing up 2 children and attempting to instil a strong sense of moral values within a stable home to the fact that both the tories and the archbishop of canterbury seem to think i am bringing down western civilisation single-handed by failing to go through some mumbo jumbo in either a church or registry office. if the tories are the party of individual freedom how on earth can they justify interfering in a wholly personal decision like that? maybe i should pop round dave’s house and tell him to stop being married to the fragrant sam because i believe being brought up by two tories is bad for children.
actually…
well i am proud to say that my children are growing up in a tory-free household.
SW – with you on all three points… can see no need for religion, marriage or a tory government!
Liked the wintry tribute to John Major – another ‘wonderfully useless’ prime minister – although nice chap, I am advised and at least he likes a game of cricket so can’t be all bad. I was astonished when the news broke that he had been shagging or, discussing ‘Ugandan’ affairs as it was known in my youth.