Some time last year I ended up spending a lot of time in court on general court days (for reasons that I’ll come to) and got to see how courts worked. As each time only the one judge presided, my observations probably say more about his court than the system in general. (He was a fabulous defence lawyer, but is now a right-wing reactionary judge – what happened to get him from one to the other is anyone’s guess. Maybe the Cybermen ‘upgraded’ him? Or the staunch defender of the downtrodden got replaced by his evil twin brother?) Whatever, most cases went along one of two lines.
One – the person pleads guilty to the misdemeanour, most usually theft, being somewhere without permission of owner, or violence. They get a telling off and a fine.
Two – the person pleads not guilty. They get told to have a talk to their lawyer as the costs of a subsequent trial aren’t worth the outcome – better to cop the plea and get it over with. The police almost always stand up and say “we had considered more serious charges but were lenient because X said they would be pleading guilty” and the threat of increased charges is imposed as well.
If the person still pleads not guilty, their case is adjourned to a future date. On that date they come back (and you’re probably starting to see how it was I ended up there a few times…) and are asked if they plan to change their plea. Then they are adjourned again etc etc
What annoyed me most each time was the number of people who changed their ‘not guilty’ plea to guilty after the threats made against them the first time. Yet they must have considered themselves not guilty when the first stood up in the dock – it’s the court people who play games. Not the defendants. The bullying that goes on doesn’t seem to make it to Reality TV!
But let’s say you are adamant you are not going to plead guilty to something you didn’t do and have a determined family member who is in the rare (both for them, and for people in the courts in general) position of being able to pay for the ongoing costs of a lawyer who isn’t a court appointed solicitor wanting to get off for lunch, but someone who has themselves become annoyed at the “plead guilty or else” threat.
And let’s say your friend, also not guilty, has not.
Are you ready for the story?
It’s going to be a two parter. For now, we’ll just have Part One.
Last February (February 10th to be precise), three boys had a few drinks at home then wandered off to
At about 3am, it looked like they weren’t going to get any time on the mic, and two of them had work the next day, so they all left. They say they were philosophical and not annoyed about it, but I’d imagine, being human, they would have been a little pissed off at being strung along all night. But maybe not. If not pissed off they were, at least, pissed.
On the way home, the stopped in at the 24 – 24 hour night & day dairy – for a feed. There’s another group there of three Maori, or part Maori, men and a ruckus going on. The police arrive. Our heroes leave the counter with their food and go to the door to have a look. This bit is from vague memory, so it’s disjointed:
The police started asking questions of people milling around. One of the three other guys point at the Samoan man in the group, a very powerful looking (but a big softie) young man, and said he had assaulted them.
The police start closely questioning the suspected assaulter (and, bad storyteller that I am, I have never worked out if one of the three other men was the assaulted, or somebody else) and his friends drunkenly stick up for their mate, including telling police they only pick on the black men, and that they had just been in the shop. The police told them to leave or he’d arrest them for obstruction. They didn’t want to leave their friend. The police told them again and they started to move away, slowly.
I’m told the other group of three then started following them yelling abuse, and so the now two gave as good as they got, but they were separated and there was no violence.
Suddenly the police appeared, threw one against a shop window to handcuff his hands behind him (if the Starbucks staff came to work to find human drool down their window, that’s why) and arrested one for disorderly behaviour.
Once at the police station they isolated him in a room and gave him the choice of confessing he was guilty to disorderly behaviour or being kept in a cell. He was drunk, tired, scared, and wanted to go home. So he did what he was told.
His Maori friend was taken to the police station and charged, but charges were later dropped.
His Samoan friend was charged with assault. He would not plead guilty.
At the first court appearance, both appeared on separate days, and both pleaded not guilty. For one, it meant changing the plea he had indicated to police he would make. His lawyer explained why. The police, for their part, said they had wanted to charge him with the more serious charge of disorderly behaviour likely to incite violence but as he had become reasonable and cooperative at the station, they told him they would bring the lesser charge. If the not guilty plea persisted, they told the judge, they would seek to reinstate their earlier charge.
The judge recommended to the defendant (as he now was) that he change his plea to not guilty. The defendant refused. The greater charge was allowed. And the case was adjourned to two weeks hence.
At that time, the defendant was asked again if he wanted to plead guilty. He said no. He was again adjourned.
In the meantime, his feisty lawyer started to hit brick walls in trying to get the evidence the police were legally obliged to supply her. Documentation was “lost”. [Actually, having worked so long in a bureaucracy myself, I concede the evidence probably WAS lost!]
His friend, charged with the assault, also kept pleading not guilty – quite rightly, because he was not guilty – only he had both the judge and the court appointed solicitor telling him to change his plea.
Eventually, on June 14th, the case got to the stage of a defended hearing, in front of a different judge, one who hadn’t had all reason and humanity mysteriously sucked out of him.
TO BE CONTINUED
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