- Title: Judges
- Date: 18th December 2003
- Summary: Police chiefs, surgeons and teachers. They are all personally accountable for their professional actions. But judges are untouchable. There's no disciplinary procedure if they make mistakes. No redress or compensation if a judge's incompetence screws up your life. For the first time ever, Dispatches brings the bench to book by revealing the judges that have had particularly high numbers of decisions overturned by the Court of Appeal. In an exclusive investigation for Dispatches , Channel 4 News' Home Affairs Editor Mark Easton names the repeat offenders, looks at the impact that judges' mistakes can have on those seeking justice and sets out the case for closer supervision of the judiciary. The Court of Appeal's records go back seven years and covers 19,000 criminal cases. After over a year of painstaking research, Mark has been through every one of those cases and reveals, for the first time, which of the 600 Crown Court judges in England and Wales have had the most mistakes corrected by the Court of the Appeal. While the records cannot offer a complete picture - often the Court of Appeal does not name the judge it criticises and some judges preside over more criminal cases than others - Mark's research reveals some names that crop up time and again. Most judges have seen the Appeal Court correct their mistakes three times or less over the last seven years. But Mark has found a number of judges who have seen their judgements overturned not three times - but 30 times. In some instances, many more. In one of the cases covered, a rape victim was forced to endure a re-trial because, according the Court of Appeal, the judge 'abandoned his responsibility', by failing to sum up the evidence for the jury. In the end it took three years before the rapist finally faced justice. In another case, a man who confessed to sexually molesting two boys over many years received a community punishment with £150 costs because he had 'good character references'. The Appeal Court increased the sentence to 15 months' imprisonment. But this is the tip of the iceberg? Dispatches reveals how the Appeal Court has had to intervene in one judges' cases 36 times, in another's 37 times and in a third 38 times. One judge has had a staggering 56 cases referred to the Court of Appeal. In just one of these cases, this Judge was told his handling of the case was "inadequate, inappropriate, dangerous, irrelevant, positively misleading, inaccurate and incomplete". It is a level of incompetence that not only brings the whole judiciary into disrepute but also places a huge burden on the taxpayer. The programme reveals how discrepancies in sentencing can occur even in the same courts. One judge has had five cases of undue leniency as well five convictions thrown out because of his mistakes. Another judge in the same courts has been written to by the Appeal Court telling him his sentences were 'too long' at least 30 times. As one defence solicitor says, such discrepancies "cause the client great concern, I don't think that that's fair and I don't think that that does the system any justice at all". In other instances, it is not just the number of cases referred to the High Court that cause concern but the nature of those cases. One judge, who has been appealed against 36 times, seems to be getting it wrong in the most sensitive cases - child abuse and violence against women. What is needed, Mark argues, is a formal transparent system of professional discipline. As one eminent QC says, 'If we're going to change the current system as the government currently proposes under the constitutional reform that they're proposing... we should look at the whole way in which judges are hired, but, more importantly, can they be fired? How do we get rid of them, the ones that aren't doing what they should be doing? The ones who undermine confidence in the judicial system, and in justice in this country. And there are a few."
- Description:Investigation into judges.
- Broadcaster:Channel 4
- Collection: Channel 4
- Genre:Documentary and Factual
- Producer:ITN Ltd.
- Programme Episode:Episode 1
- Transmission Date:18/12/2003
- Rights:UK and Eire
- Decade: 2000s