The first thing that I discovered that if you want to see a trial then Friday may not be the best day as all there was seemed to be bail hearings, pretrial hearings oh and one decision from a jury.
So what did go on? What was obvious was that a lot of cases were dealt with, I actually lost count, but they varied from the serious to the sublime. There was one case of kidnap and rape where the accused was remanded, one of armed robbery (I overheard one of the barristers say he expected to go down as he came in with a huge suitcase) where the accused was found guilty by a majority of 10-2, one where there were 4 accused of burglary that saw the public gallery fill up with one supposes were family who proceeded to swore under their breath at the pleas as they were entered. One pleaded guilty whilst the others not guilty. We had a couple of drug cases with one woman being found in possession of 2000 tablets of class c drugs not surprisingly that was a plea of guilty or you got me banged to rights guv! There was the chap of 64 (the only person to turn up in a suit) who looked like he wouldn't say boo to a goose but turned out to be accused of GBH on his wife. This was as an odd case as she had since died from causes not related to this charge.
However the best was the case of the £1.50 curry. It seems two lads had helped themselves to some curry made by someone in a shared flat that they had been invited to, the case seemed to be about the amount of meat taken in the plate of curry. Much suppressed giggles amongst the court staff was followed by some common sense from the judge who suggested the prosecution and the defence get to together and find a way of not having this come to trial and waste even more money. Also at this end of the day was the case of a guy who stole a TV and digibox from a hotel. It seems he was, as they say in drink, at the time and thought he could have this TV which was in the lobby of the hotel. So he got the receptionist to call him a taxi and then when it arrived proceeded to take of in what was now a get away taxi. The next day he then phoned the hotel to ask if he could have the remote control as he had forgotten it. Ah a criminal mastermind at work.
My impression was that the court worked very efficiently through it's list and that you also get some idea of the timescales involved for cases to come to court (I would say 6 months to 2 years). The latter seems long but also shows that efforts are made to ensure both the accused and victims get the chance for some level of justice, although not all decisions seem just that is also a function of how a system such as this has to develop.
Do I believe in judgement? Well from this limited view I would say you need rules and controls in society as there are some people who are not as nice as we would hope in a civilised society but there in lies an even bigger debate.
