Florida Criminal Lawyers

A report into standards in the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) says that some cases are being put in jeopardy due to mistakes by prosecutors.

Inspectors assessed a total of 861 cases and found that 7% of cases were either mistakenly discontinued or prosecuted as a result of errors by prosecutors in both analysis and judgement, with this leading to greater anxiety from both victims and witnesses and also cases which saw prosecutions brought against people who had done nothing wrong.

While the number of mistakes has fallen since a new scheme was introduced in 2010 to help drive improvement, Michael Fuller, chief inspector of Her Majesty’s CPS Inspectorate, said that there would only be a sustained improvement in standards if the CPS used a “robust assessment process”.

The thought of people being sent to prison due to the failings of the CPS, or going free for the same reason is incentive enough for every effort to be made to keep prosecutor mistakes to a minimum. Have you any experience of the workings of the CPS, good or bad? We’d like to hear from you if you have.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/cps-prosecution-errors-causing-distress-7592981.html?origin=internalSearch

Are children’s homes “criminalising” youngsters in their care by prosecuting them for minor offences which would be treated differently if the youngster was at home with his or her parents?

A leading magistrate certainly believes so: Janis Cauthery is critical of the care system, saying that it too often resorts to prosecution when there are other alternatives. Mrs Cauthery, who sits in Warwickshire, says that many of the acts, which occur in the care home itself, while classed as criminal damage, are often little more than breaking a window or breaking crockery; acts which are unacceptable but in the ordinary domestic setting would lead to little more than a severe telling off from a parent. She adds that, by treating these matters more seriously than they should, they run the risk of the children themselves being led into a “cycle of crime and homelessness”.

Is Janis Cauthery right in her views? It seems, from her comments, that too many homes view their residents as potential criminals rather than vulnerable children in need of love and support. Though she says that this only affects a minority of children in care, it is still too many and will do little to help them in the perilous adjustment to adulthood.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2128497/Magistrate-attacks-care-saying-criminalises-children-prosecuting-trivial-matters.html

A jury member who phoned in sick while she was on holiday in Malta has been given a 56-day sentence for contempt of court. Was the judge right to punish her in this way?

Janet Chapman was a jury member in a robbery trial that was expected to last four weeks, but on the Monday of the fourth week she phoned the court to say she would not be in because she was suffering from sciatica. However, it emerged that the call had been made from Malta, where Chapman had gone on holiday despite her obligations to the court.

She had visited her doctors complaining about her back and was given a sick note for seven days but flew out to Malta, claiming to be unaware that she was not allowed to go on holiday during jury service. The judge at Preston Crown Court said that she had “deliberately deceived” the court for her own means.

Was the sentence right given the inexcusable behaviour or was it a little harsh given that she was said to be suffering from back pain even if she did undoubtedly lie about her reason for not being at court. Let me know what you think.

http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/custodial-sentence-holiday-juror

It appears that the Conservative party is calling on the Prime Minister to seize back from Europe new laws on crime and policing or risk the transferring of power to Europe becoming irreversible. Are they right to warn the Prime Minister in this way?

A total of 102 Tory backbench MPs have put their names to a letter which urges David Cameron to opt out of 130 EU laws on crime and policing over the next two years and unilaterally repatriate them under the Lisbon Treaty. It says that unless the Prime Minister takes this action by 2014 the European Courts of Justice in Luxembourg could force Britain to enforce them in full.

Opting out would give the country the chance to have a say in how the courts apply current extradition rules and would also exclude Britain from a requirement to share DNA and fingerprints with police forces on the Continent.

Is this an issue solely to be determined by which side of the fence you are on regarding Europe and Britain s involvement in it, or are there wider issues? Can you be a Eurosceptic, yet very much in favour of Europe-wide laws on crime or might you be a Europhile yet against these proposals? Let us know what you think on this debate.

Should firmer action be taken against landlords who abuse their position by badly managing their homes or charging extortionate fees?

The Edinburgh Private Tenants Action Group was formed after some members had bad experiences with buy to let landlords who went against their housing rights and the group says that it wants councils to take action against those landlords who, for example, do not repair the property when needed, illegally evict tenants and keep deposits for no reason.

With people finding getting onto the property ladder so difficult, renting is often the only realistic option, not just for students but for many young people, so having criminal landlords operating exacerbates the problems they face.

Should local councils have greater powers at their disposal to deal with landlords who fall foul of the law? Let us know what you think.

The overwhelming verdict from an independent inquiry was that fundamental reforms are needed to protect victims of stalking because current legislation is not fit for purpose .

That was the conclusion reached by a parliamentary inquiry set up by a cross-party group of MPs, which heard from victims, that they had little faith in the criminal justice system and that too often police appeared not to take their complaints seriously. The inquiry also heard that, when allegations are pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), plea-bargaining often led to much reduced sentences.

The legislation used is the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 but the inquiry found that this is not often used to prosecute stalkers. By contrast, the situation in Scotland appears to have changed since stalking was made a specific criminal offence in 2010. In the first 11 months of 2011 there were prosecutions of 400 alleged stalkers compared to just 70 in the whole of the last decade using the 1997 legislation.

So, that is perhaps compelling evidence that a change in the law, which has had such an effect north of the border, is urgently required in England and Wales. Should the government, as the inquiry finds, try to introduce new effective reforms or is the fault with the police and the CPS in not using the current laws effectively? As ever, get involved in this debate.

Personal injury lawyers have given a lukewarm response to the Prime Minister’s latest speech attacking the country’s health and safety culture.

David Cameron spoke to a group of small business leaders last week and said that the current situation made it much too easy for personal injury lawyers to launch action against businesses who often settle the case out of court because it is too expensive to fight it.

The PM told his audience that the government was committed to exempting a million self-employed workers from regulation, to removing the need for employers to report minor accidents and it wanted to place a limit on the amount that solicitors could earn from small-value personal injury claims.

However, David Bott, president of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, has said that the government should give more information on the proposed changes and said that businesses should be made to feel confident in the knowledge they have nothing to fear from litigation as long as they take reasonable steps to avoid needless injury.