The punishment for someone who unlawfully enters an enclosure with a dangerous animal is usually delivered without the involvement of the legal system. But when a 21-year-old man recently entered the grizzly bear pit at San Francisco zoo, state prosecutors took a different approach.

The bear pit is protected by high walls, a barricade, an electrified fence and a 14-foot deep moat, but Kenneth Herron overcame those obstacles and leapt into the pit one afternoon in September. One of two very large bears approached him and gave him a sniff; Herron narrowly escaped being mauled to death. Zoo staff averted disaster by firing a warning shot and the bears retreated. Herron was then snatched from the pit.

It might be evident to some people, even those outside professional psychiatry, that Herron is a man with mental health issues. State prosecutors, however, took the view that it would be sensible to have him punished. As he is not afraid of jumping into bear pits, precisely what sort of deterrent sentence the prosecutors wanted Herron to get is not clear.

Herron was prosecuted for criminal trespass and “disturbing dangerous animals in a park”. But the charge of criminal trespass was thrown out by Judge Wallace Douglass. The offence, under the Californian Penal Code, was designed to catch squatters and involves entering “and occupying” someone else’s property without their consent. According to People v Wilkinson (1967), “occupying” means staying for some time and, as Herron didn’t do that, the trespass prosecution was ruled to be inappropriate.

On the charge of disturbing wild animals in a park, the jury had to agonise over whether the bears were, in fact, disturbed. In what way could two 500-pound omnivores be disturbed by a single unarmed man? And looking at who was most disturbed in the pit on that day, the bears are not an obvious choice: Herron said he was there because he had heard the voice of Tyson Beckford, the model and actor, instructing him to rescue a damsel in distress.

After the trial, one juror said that the jury was not convinced that the bears were disturbed because they didn’t bound over to Herron as soon as he entered their grotto. Ultimately, though, the jury acquitted him as there wasn’t sufficient evidence that he knew what he was doing when he entered the enclosure.

Gary Slapper’s new book Weird Cases is published in December by Wildy, Simmonds & Hill

Bookmark It

Lawyers face having to return more than £25 million paid to them by mistake because of mismanagement in the running of the legal aid scheme.

Lord Bach, the Minister for Legal Aid, said that he had put in place an action plan to recover the amounts after a report by the National Audit Office last month found evidence of inaccurate payments. He said that measures were being taken to ensure that claims were more effectively scrutinised.

The move comes after a report today concludes that taxpayers are receiving a poor deal from the £1.2 billion a year spent on criminal legal aid.

The audit office says that the way that the scheme has been both administered and procured in England and Wales “presents risks to the value for money provided to the taxpayer, as well as to the sustainability of the service”. It says that the Legal Services Commission, which spends £125 million a year on running the scheme, fails to collate data centrally and, therefore, cannot determine whether it is paying a fair price to lawyers.

Despite introducing “significant market reforms” in recent years, the commission has not always piloted these or evaluated their impact.

Other findings by the spending watchdog include that there are tensions in the relationship between the profession and the Legal Services Commission.

More than one in three solicitors surveyed found the commission “unhelpful” and nearly one in three did not believe that it fully understood the legal system.

Dominic Grieve, Shadow Justice Secretary, said: “This is a savage indictment of this Government’s mismanagement of the legal aid budget.

“The Government doesn’t understand the market for legal services and consistently fails to spend money effectively.”

Edward Leigh, chairman of the Commons Committee of Public Accounts, said: “Criminal legal aid is a cornerstone of our legal system. It means that all defendants can get highly professional, legal representation when in a police station or a court of law.

“If only that high professionalism were matched in the Legal Services Commission’s administration of criminal legal aid.

“Unfortunately that is not so. The data the Commission uses to make payments for legal aid services is inaccurate and incomplete and the commission does not have a good enough understanding of the market from which it is buying these services.

“Without getting these basics right, how do they expect to get a good deal? Which of us would buy blind in this way if it were our own money?”

In 2008-09 legal aid spending was £2.09 billion: £1.18 billion on criminal legal aid and £0.91 billion on civil legal aid, covering 1.6 million and 1.3 million acts of advice respectively.

The Legal Services Commission spent another £125 million on the administration of civil and criminal legal aid.

England and Wales spend more per capita on legal aid than any other comparable nation except Northern Ireland. This is partly because of a higher level of prosecutions than in many other countries, the report says.

Source : The Times

Bookmark It

The Scottish government has welcomed a court ruling that paves the way for killers to spend the rest of their lives behind bars.

The SNP administration praised the decision of five judges at the court of appeal to increase prison terms for murder in Scotland, effectively ensuring that life will mean life in the worst cases.

A Scottish government spokesman said: “We welcome the decision of the Appeal Court to update its guidance on the setting of punishment parts in murder cases.

“Our Criminal Justice and Licensing Bill, stage one of which is being debated today, takes forward our commitment to establish a Scottish Sentencing Council which will have the power to develop sentencing guidelines to help improve consistency, transparency and public confidence in sentencing.”

The senior judges, including Scotland’s most senior judge, Lord Hamilton, ruled that knife murderers should spend at least 16 years behind bars. They also said that child murderers, police killers and people convicted of firearms murders should not be freed for at least 20 years and terms of more than 30 years could also be handed out in cases that included mass murder by terrorists.

Currently murderers are given mandatory life sentences but punishment parts have to be specified by judges.

The new guidance was issued after the judges decided on the minimum time that three men sentenced for murder should serve before being considered for parole.

The Lord Advocate had appealed against the length of the men’s terms on the grounds they were “unduly lenient” and asked the Court of Appeal in Edinburgh to issue guidance on sentences for murder.

The three minimum terms being considered included Brian Boyle and Greig Maddock, who were convicted of the murder of Robert Bowie, who was kicked, stabbed in the leg, then set on fire on October 14, 2006, in Dunfermline. He died five days later in hospital.

Boyle assaulted and stabbed Mr Bowie in the leg and was then joined by Maddock.

They placed Mr Bowie on a pyre of magazines, poured lighter fluid on him and set him alight while he was still alive.

Boyle had the punishment part of his sentence increased from 15 years to 20 years. Maddock’s sentenced increased from 12 years to 18 years. Both men were convicted in June 2007.

The third appeal involved Robert Kelly who pleaded guilty to the murder of 64-year-old Agnes Mechen in Glasgow on August 30, 2002.

Kelly was jailed in July 2007 after he admitted assaulting Mrs Mechen, placing a cord around her neck, tightening it and robbing her of a handbag, which contained between £180 and £200.

He concealed the body under a mound of soil or rubble.

Kelly’s minimum term was increased from 15 years to 19 years.

Source : The Times

Bookmark It