Coroners and Justice Bill

If a lawyer was here and did not take part in the debate on this amendment, it would be a bit like those who were in bed on St Crispin’s Day, when the battle was being fought in France. They would be ashamed in later life of the role that they played that day—so I do not want that reproach. To establish my qualifications, as a young barrister, I once prosecuted a murder case when there was capital punishment and, by the grace of God, the defendant was found unfit to plead and I never had to appear in a second murder case when there was capital punishment. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has picked on a very important point, in the fudged verdict. Those who are familiar with English legal history—although they will not get a dissertation on that from me now—may recall a crime that used to be called grand larceny, to be guilty of which you had to steal an object worth more than 40 shillings. The issue of whether it was worth more than that was left to the jury, who would habitually value a diamond ring at well below that amount. The other day—well, not the other day but about 15 years ago—there was a case of malicious destruction of some weapon of war that was going to be exported to tyrants who would use it to suppress their population. The people involved, who were mainly women, although there may have been some gallant men there as well, physically destroyed that weapon of war and were charged with malicious damage, or whatever it was. To the amazement of all except the legal historians, they were acquitted, because the jury were simply not going to find them guilty of putting out of the power of a tyrant a weapon of destruction. To allow the extenuating circumstance rider to be added is a great improvement on the existing law. There may be problems to be faced, although we do not need to go into that now, in that the clause says that the judge will make up his mind in relation to the facts as found by the jury, who will have to make some finding about the particular facts that amount to the extenuating circumstances. Without complicating the issue today, one can imagine circumstances when there were rivals as to which of the so-called alleged extenuating circumstances matched up to it. But the general idea seems wholly praise-worthy and we should adopt it.