Travellers

Local authorities will no longer have to provide travellers with sites. It will now be a criminal offence for them to camp after a local authority has asked them to leave. It also becomes a criminal offence not to leave land when asked to do so by a senior police officer if there has been damage to land or if there are more than 6 vehicles on the land.

Hunt saboteurs/ peaceful protest/ road blocks

A new offence of “aggravated trespass” will be introduced. Trespassers will now be committing a criminal offence if they are intending to disrupt a legal activity. This measure has been introduced to outlaw hunt saboteurs, but might easily apply to other forms of protest such as demonstrations against road-building, trade union pickets or demonstrations outside foreign embassies. The Bill also bans assemblies which are held on land without the permission of the owner and gives the police the power to stop people they suspect of travelling to such an assembly.

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I. Big disparities in sentencing of criminals between different countries, even within Europe, are revealed in a survey to be published at the biennial conference of the International Bar Conference in Cannes. The survey team put a series of hypothetical cases to legal authorities in more than 20 countries and found penalties in Europe varied by more than 10 years for crimes such as rape and by more than 40 years when countries from different continents are compared.

In one question, a 19-year old man had been found guilty of raiding a bank with four other people, masked and armed with a machinegun. He was unemployed, the youngest member of the gang, and the £800,000 had been recovered. The defendant had several convictions for petty theft. Canada suggested a likely sentence of three to five years. Norway two to three years and Denmark six years. Spain said four years, two months and a day, and Ireland five to six years for a not guilty plea. England said ten to fourteen years, or five years in a young offenders’ institution, and Texas ten years.

In a case of burglary of a stately home, goods worth £90,000 were taken and later recovered from a man with a substantial record of theft. Canada said it would impose a jail sentence of five to seven years, Kenya three years plus hard labour, Denmark one to two years and the Cook Islands probation of three months. Texas suggested ten years’ jail and England suggested from three to seven years.

Likely sentences for a domestic assault case, where the husband broke his wife’s nose, where there was a long history of disputes and previous charges of assault, ranged from between six and eighteen months in Canada to 30 or 40 days in Denmark, possibly suspended. Six months’ imprisonment was likely in Kenya, a fine in Scotland and ten days’ jail in Texas. The likely sentence in England is six months, suspended for two years.

Peter Michael Muller, an attorney in Munich and chairman of the association’s criminal law committee which conducted the survey said the findings would help practitioners in transnational criminal law and could lead to sentencing reforms.

II. Below you see the story of an extraordinary case in British legal history. The affair started in 1949 and was finally closed in 1966. The story began when a man called Timothy Evans was arrested for the murder of his wife and baby. He was charged with double murder, but a short time later one of the charges was dropped and he was tried for the murder of his daughter only. During the trial Evans accused the man whose house he had been living in, John Christie, of crimes, but no attention was paid to him. The jury found Evans guilty and he was sentenced to death. An appeal was turned down and he was executed in 1950.

Some time later, more women’s bodies were discovered in Christie’s house: two, three, four, five, six. John Christie was the police’s chief suspect and they started a nationwide hunt for him. He was soon apprehended. Alleged statements by Christie while he was in custody cast doubt on the Evans hanging. When he went to court Christie denied that he had murdered Mrs. Evans, but in private it was said that he confessed to that crime. His plea of insanity with regard to other murders was rejected and he was convicted of killing his wife.

Soon afterwards there was an enquiry into the execution of Timothy Evans. The judges decided that justice had been done and Evans had been rightly hanged. It was only in 1966 that another enquiry was set up. This time it was decided that Evans had probably been innocent and he was given a free pardon. Better late than never, as they say.

III. In 1966 a Florida man named Clarence Gideon was arrested by police as he stood near a small store into which someone had broken earlier and had stolen some beer. Gideon was arrested because another man said he saw the theft take place. Gideon was not represented by a lawyer in court. He claimed he was innocent, and tried to act as his own lawyer. The witness succeeded in convincing the jury that Gideon was guilty, and Gideon went to prison. Gideon read law books in the prison library and then wrote to the Supreme Court, saying he had been denied the right to be presented by a lawyer.

The court ruled that Gideon was right. It said that people who are accused of serious crimes must have lawyers to defend them, even if they cannot afford to pay such lawyers. In that case, the state must pay the lawyer’s fee.

IV. In 1963, a man named Ernesto Miranda was arrested in the state of Arizona. As police questioned him, Miranda confessed to a kidnapping and rape. His confession was cited as evidence against him at trial. Miranda appealed to the Supreme Court. He claimed his right had been violated because the police had not told him he could remain silent or that he had a right to be represented by a lawyer. The Supreme Court agreed that Miranda’s rights had been violated and his conviction was overturned. Ever since, police have been required to inform arrested people that they do not have to answer questions and that they have the right to be represented by a lawyer.