Summing up for juries
Summing up for juries (directing them on the law and summarising the evidence) is one of the most important functions that circuit judges and recorders perform in any criminal trial. You can read my views about how judges can make jurors’ tasks easier by giving written directions with sign-posts to verdict in my Criminal Law Review article Summing Up – a Judge’s Perspective.
Legal definitions of offences
Summing-up should never be a simple cut and paste job. We all know that legal directions have to be carefully tailored to fit the evidence and needs of each trial. On the other hand, there is no point in reinventing the wheel each time we sum up to a jury. The Judicial College Crown Court Benchbook contains invaluable specimen directions. They have also published more recent guidance Crown Court Benchbook Directing the Jury. Many judges keep copies of directions used in earlier cases, in ring binders, card indexes or electronically.
The links on the left hand side of this page are to legal definitions of offences which I have used in the past. They are bare bones directions which will often need fleshing out. I hope that they are useful – but we all make mistakes and it would be surprising if someone, somewhere did not spot an error or errors somewhere among these directions. So, caveat judex. If you do spot something wrong, please let me know.
Jury trials and Article 6
Taxquet v Belgium This is a note about the Grand Chamber of the ECtHR decision that there was a breach of Article 6 in a criminal case with a lay jury because the absence of precise questions to the jury meant that the defendant was unable to ascertain which evidence caused the jury to find him guilty. It raises the question of whether, in the absence of “sign post to verdict questions”, an English or Welsh jury trial is Article 6 compliant.
The Child as a Victim in Court
child victim is a link to a paper which I wrote summarising the discussion The Child as a Victim in Court at the colloque in Rennes organised by the Franco-British-Irish Judicial Committee in 2005.
