Judge Lynch: a four-letter fracas
When judges are sworn in, they undertake to do right by everyone “without fear or favour, affection or ill will”. On the face of it, said Valentine Low in The Times, that would appear to rule out addressing the person in the dock as “a bit of a c***”. But Judge Patricia Lynch, QC, was only “giving as good as she got” when she resorted to the term last week. It happened after she sentenced a “racist thug”, John Hennigan, to 18 months in prison for breaching an Asbo by abusing a black woman. Upon hearing his tariff, Hennigan swore at Judge Lynch. She promptly replied: “You are a bit of a c*** yourself.” After a further exchange of insults, Hennigan made a Nazi salute and started singing an anti-semitic song. “We’re all really impressed,” said the judge. “Take him down.”
“I think we can agree that Judge Lynch’s remarks were fair comment, if not the most elegant repartee,” said Jemima Lewis in The Daily Telegraph. But it shocked, and in many cases “thrilled”, people to hear such language uttered by a judge. In the popular imagination, judges are “prim”, unworldly types – which is odd, really, as they see more of the seamy side of life than most of us ever will. “A little Anglo-saxon vulgarity is the least of it.”
Judges shouldn’t swear in court, though, said Peter Hitchens in The Mail on Sunday. They wield enormous power, and need to remain dispassionate. The person Judge Lynch swore at is “pathetic, fat and lonely – a dismal life probably made worse by taking state-approved ‘antidepressant’ drugs… Stupid four-letter words are all that is left to such people.” Others don’t need to stoop to their level. Judge Lynch has become “a hero to the retributive classes” for her treatment of Hennigan, said Simon Jenkins in The Guardian. But it’s hard to see how locking up this “antisocial menace” for a few months, as opposed to meting out a form of community punishment, will do anything to improve his behaviour or prospects. Although Judge Lynch was wrong to say what she said, this “fracas” will have been worth it if it makes people question “why she felt it in the best interests of society for this troubled man to have the rest of his life blighted by a prison record”.