No Right to Justice in England and Wales

When you are sent to prison, you are not only deprived of your freedom, your liberty but also you are disenfranchised of your legal and human rights and entitlements. As the law states, every person who has been convicted and sentenced by a court are entitled to have that conviction and sentence reviewed by a higher court or tribunal.

Unfortunately, however, we live in a Kafkaesque Appeal system where a Single Judge reviews your cogent Grounds of Appeal at the Royal Courts of Justice on the papers who more often than not refuses leave to appeal and the all-important Representation Order (used to be called legal aid). Thus, the Applicant has to renew the Application to be heard by the Full Court or two or three judges at the Gothic edifice in the Strand where the Applicant is neither legally represented nor allowed to appear in person.

We learn the judgement that has been decided ‘sub-Rosa’ is read out like some edict from a dictator to the court in a matter of minutes, which is not appealable to the Supreme Court all because you were not granted leave to appeal on the papers by the Single Judge and received a decision on the review and not on an authorised judgement on the Appeal.

As a direct result, we learn through hard-won experience that the Appeal against conviction and sentence is all a grade A chimaera. "Something that is hoped for, but illusory or impossible to achieve". However, what makes matters ineffably worse, more time and effort was spent by the current judicial incumbents at the Strand in closing down perfectly arguable and credible Grounds of Appeal than would have been spent in giving permission to proceed to the Full Court. Therefore, it is emphatically argued and advanced the that the Royal Courts of Justice have become cunningly intellectually dishonest and hypocritical. Moreover, we learn there is a rough estimate of 85,000 prisoners in the British penal system, whereby at least 20% approximately 17,000 prisoners are believed to be the recipients of one miscarriage of justice or another — Albeit, a miscarriage involving a conviction or sentence or in some cases both. The scale of the problem is a terrible indictment on the Judiciary of England and Wales. It states, does it not, that the Judiciary is woefully infected and has been for some time with the misguided ability and capability to breach its own laws, principles and doctrines in order to maintain the status quo that the Court of Appeal is not renowned for justice and fairness as it would shine the spotlight of responsibility on the Police Service and the Crown Prosecution Service.

The problem is, how long can this charade at the Court of Appeal continue? How long can the fiasco of refusing entirely justified and legitimate Appeals be sustained? More substantively, how long can the hidebound incumbents at the High Court continue to hold up the corroded pillars of the Police Service and the Crown Prosecution Service that keeps presenting weak and insubstantial convictions that have violated and contravened the most basic of English laws, such as~ drafting the indictment, arraignment, disclosure and Joint Enterprise? How long must the human-made doctrine of the "proviso" be used at the Strand to reject and dismiss flawless Appeals? How long must the only chance of a successful appeal depend upon how much publicity the Applicant has in the community? Why is it senior and junior counsel in Chambers up-and-down the land are reluctant to take on Appeal work as they are frequently admonished and castigated by Appeal Judges that are neck-deep in so much bias and prejudice that they do not even know that they are wallowing in the stuff?

We have now reached the stage where the legal profession and its clientele in prison are au fait with the wholly negative decisions and judgements of the Court of Appeal. It does not take a clairvoyant with a crystal ball to forewarn the bench and their wingers that the dark days of dodgy decisions are becoming all too predictable, habitual, frequent. The last time the judicial planets were all in alignment on such matters of unreasonableness, irrationality and unfairness was in the fall of 1989 when the Birmingham 6, Guildford 4 and Maguire 7 sent shivers along the spine of the Judiciary. This time there is no stockpile of similarly wrongly convicted prisoners save those under the ignominious banner of Joint Enterprise. This time there is a constellation of 17,000 wrongfully convicted prisoners plus, speckled across the prison estate. Small wonder, legal aid for judicially reviewable decisions are non-existent and depend upon pro bona counsel or prisoners who have learnt the bare-bones of the law.

History tells us, in quite unequivocal terms, that publicity is the key to justice and fairness within our Judiciary. The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Justices and High Court Judges, absolutely deplore the public taking an interest in matters of law and order. They see law and order as their domain and their domain alone. For example, who recalls the front page of the Daily Mail which called High Court Judges: "The Enemy of the People" over the Brexit fiasco? The focus of the news media on the dark corners of the Gothic building in the Strand made them sit up and justify and legitimise their raison d'etre. How much more can the disillusioned legal profession and penal system take off the bizarre and weird decisions and judgements emanating from the Strand?
 
What message does it send to us, when they do not even correct the substantive doctrine of Joint Enterprise that took a wrong turn by mistake decades ago, let alone compelling individual appeals that warrant and demand amendment and/or correction? We cannot merely sit by and let this happen. We must, as a matter of urgency, speak up for the sake of all.

Terry G.M. Smith BA Hons
A8672AQ
HMP Highpoint
Stradishall Newmarket
Suffolk
CBS 9YG