Let’s knock this legal myth on the head once and for all
IHAVE bitten my tongue for long enough now but the time has come to dispel a few myths and legends about how the court system works. On top of that I’m prepared to name and shame those who fuel this fire of falseness – not in a deliberate attempt to hoodwink you, but because despite knowing better they too appear to be clueless.
Therefore I’m outing the following: Leicestershire Roads Policing Unit and its police and crime commissioner; Greater Manchester Police’s traffic section; the London Evening Standard; the BBC; the Yorkshire Post; heck, even our own Derby Law Centre and the Daily Mirror.
And, believe me, the list could go on.
The subject of such falseness is a simple one.
Each of them has recently used a photograph of a gavel to illustrate a court or law story, and it gets my goat and that of many others who ply their trade in their professions.
Gavels, those wooden hammers we all know, have never been used in the courts of England and Wales. Never.
Not once has a bewigged judge raised one after jailing a defendant, banged it down on the desk in front of him and bellowed “send him dooowwwwnnn!”
I’m sure our own celebrity auctioneer, Charles Hanson, has slammed one down many times when he has brought the bidding to a close at his Etwall premises.
But I can categorically assure you that none of the judges I have ever sat in a courtroom with have.
It simply doesn’t happen and this online illustration has to stop.
There is even a Twitter account called Inappropriate Gavels which outs such organisations, as I have done here, and it has my full backing – and the backing of at least two barrister mates of mine who operate in the courts of the East Midlands.
The three of us may as well begin our own organisation highlighting these inaccuracies, and Naylor, Hullis and Wilson has a nice legal sounding name anyway.
And while we’re at it, let’s dispel another myth.
Contrary to what the true crime drama makers on TV might try to make you believe, even the most eminent QCs in the country, resplendent in their wigs and gowns, do not wander around a courtroom like they are perusing the shelves of book store trying to convince a jury the person on trial is guilty or not guilty.
And most of the courtrooms of England and Wales are not giant, high-ceilinged, oak-panelled vacuous rooms.
In fact the two that most resemble this, at Southern Derbyshire Magistrates’ Court in St Mary’s Gate, have such dreadful acoustics that I dread going there as you can hardly hear a word being said.
Instead, the vast majority of cases are held in smaller, functional rooms where the serious business of seeing the criminal justice process in full swing is carried out professionally.
Physically going back into the courts in Derby over the past month after a year of covering them remotely has been a strangely pleasing experience.
I have caught up with court staff and barristers face-to-face for the first time and it has been a joy.
Two judges have taken polite digs at me, which I have taken in the good humour they were meant, and this week a visiting judge at Derby Crown Court had us all in absolute hysterics between cases with his keen sense of humour and storytelling.
And guess what? There wasn’t one gavel in sight. Not one...