Crown Court

This discretionary power would be for so-called either-way offences in which the defendant can currently opt for their case to be heard either in the magistrate's court or...

Or Crown Court.

The proposal has been put forward to avoid defendants choosing a Crown Court trial in order to delay proceedings, effectively taking advantage of the growing backlog of cases that is leading some trials to be delayed for more than three years.

However, it is unclear, the Times says, on what legal basis judges would decide where cases should be heard.

There's also a risk of legal challenges from defendants denied a jury trial.

This, in my view, is a hopeless compromise, which would do nothing to resolve the issues that we've discussed many, many times, including with Cassia Rowland of the Institute for Government, to the effect that there is no clear evidence at all that the diminution of jury trials in this category would save any time at all.

in the Crown Court.

This is tinkering.

Well, if you talk to barristers, they have complaints about the states generally, of the courts across Britain, you know, ceilings leaking, lifts not working, all of those things.

So it's not a problem unique to Southwark Crown Court, but it is a little bit tired, shall we say.

Always some amusing graffiti in the loos as well in all of these Crown Courts as well.

Going in there, you know, Protestants of Innocence and so on.

But yeah, it's not a glamorous setting necessarily.

Jasmine later described hearing the sentence as a, quote, "rock to my face." Olivia said she felt she was the one being punished because the boys were still in the same town and she was the one who was hiding in her house.

Now, in England, I guess anyone can ask the attorney general to look at the Crown Court sentence on a specified serious offense, and rape is on that list of serious offenses, as it should be.

It is reported that multiple requests were sent to the attorney general and submitted asking for it to be reviewed.

Five days after the sentencing, the now dubbed Fordingbridge three were referred for review.

That's what we call common law, and it's why Britain's legal system has spread across the Commonwealth.

Today, the hierarchy starts with the Crown Court handling criminal matters.

Next comes the High Court, tackling civil cases.

At the top sits the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, which took over the House of Lords' judicial role in two thousand and nine.

So he said, go no plea and we'll go from there.

So I went no plea, was carted off to Peterborough Prison in a sweatbox that afternoon, was then back in court, in Crown Court, because the magistrates...

A public order charge is an either-or case, so it means you can hear it at magistrates or you can hear it...

If you were to go not guilty and you wanted a trial, you'd obviously have to go to Crown.

Or equally, when someone like me that doesn't break the law and it hasn't got previous and all that kind of thing, you would assume that it would be heard in a magistrate court.

But

it's quite telling that a magistrate's court, I mean, it's changed slightly now, I think, but a magistrate's court then could only give a sentence of up to two years, whereas a crown court starts from two years.

So that tells you immediately that they knew that they were going to hit me up.

There were also drug charges connected to the same investigation as the defendants were accused of conspiring to supply heroin between December 2010 and March 2011 which gave the prosecution a wider picture of the criminal operation they were allegedly involved in.

Given the seriousness of the allegations, the case was sent to the Crown Court with the five defendants due to appear at Sheffield Crown Court on April 20th.

The list of defendants would later grow to six when Lusher was brought into the case as I touched upon earlier, but we've already gone over the fact that he would go on to be acquitted.

Meanwhile, the search for Adam continued.

But there was never proof that Adam had actually stolen money, interfered with the heroin, taken drugs belonging to the gang, or informed the police.

The killing simply came about because of what Lee alone thought Adam had done, not because those accusations were ever established as fact.

On November 11th, a jury was sworn in at Sheffield Crown Court and the trial of the people accused of murdering Adam finally got underway.

Lee, Thomas, Luke, Jackson and Frau all denied murder and they also denied conspiring to pervert the course of justice by concealing and disposing of his dismembered body.