The M word

The M word.  Murder.  I remember that when I started my career as a barrister, murder was such a rarity that to be briefed in a murder case was something that caused a professional racing of the heart.  Just to read an indictment accusing a client of MURDER was a cause of professional excitement and anxiety in equal measure.  In those days murder cases had something of an etheral feeling to them...somehow not quite real.

That was 25 years ago.  Now things are different.  Utterly different and completely divorced from the unwritten code that regulated criminality a quarter century ago.  Those 'old school' gangland bosses I used to know so well are either dead or serving long sentences.  The new generation of serious organised crime members don't seem to have a code at all.  At least not one that I understand.

I have just finished a long case in Manchester involving an organised crime group called The A Team and the essence of the Prosecution case was that the attempted murders being tried were part of a series of tit for tat murders between rival gangs in Salford.  Having finished the case, I found myself reflecting on violent crime today and how it is so different from that which prevailed when I came to the Bar.  In those early days, even the most feared of criminals had a sense of the sancity of life and a reluctance to kill, certainly to kill indiscriminately.  The Krays (one of whom was defended by Sir Ivan Lawrence formerly of my chambers) traded on the fear of violence no doubt, but murder was a last resort.  I have defended more murders in the last three years than the Krays could possibly have committed.  Murders committed for the most trivial of motives - disrespect being foremost amongst them.  These days to say something derogatory about a man could have you shot or killed.  To 'diss' a rival is to invite a threat to your life.  Indeed, the Drill rap music banned by many websites lyrically details what murderous plans the 'dissed' has for the 'disser'.  Most of the defendants I have represented in gang related murders are in their early twenties or in their teens.  Lives more concerned with dying than living. I have no doubt that those young lives - whether I have seen them acquitted or convicted are damaged beyond the scars left by gunfire or knifings.  Those lives are already a parody of death in that the kill or be killed ethos of street crime today trumps death over life.  Indeed for many young men involved in organised crime life is considered no more than a stepping stone to death.

The prevalence of knife crime in our cities is something that even I have not become inured to despite my being exposed to it in the numerous cases I defend.  I still find it shocking that the smallest disagreement, the most inconsequential spat can result in the snuffing out of a life at the point of a blade.  So pointlessly.  Gun crime too is at unprecedented levels, with firearms seemingly available to any criminal determined to obtain them.  Although it is well documented that a single gun can, over its lifetime, be used to take life time and again, I have yet to be involved in an arms importation trial. Come to think of it, I don't even know a colleague who has been involved in such a trial himself.  Policing has completely failed in tackling the importation into this country of handguns, most of which originate from Eastern Europe, manufactured during civil conflicts within those countries.  The millions spent on investigating and prosecuting drug related crime no doubt has its policy merits, but the fight against drugs is a losing battle.  Worse, far worse is losing a life.  A battle we really cannot ever accept we are losing.

So what can be done about the senseless and almost casual way in which murder is committed in this new world gang culture?  It is axiomatic that there is no simple answer nor any single solution.  But any journey no matter how long starts with a single step.  And there are many steps we might consider taking.  Just as examples, it occurs to me that stop and search powers should be extended and utilised without fear of accusations of racial bias or any form of racial stereotyping.  Quite simply high risk neighbourhoods are high risk neighbourhoods regardless of ethnicity.  Is it now so totally politically incorrect even to consider the ethnicity of, for example, killers and the killed in London?  A newspaper recently published photographs of all those young men and women murdered over the last year.  If you care to look at that montage you may come to conclusions of your own about aspects of this huge problem.  And it is indeed huge.  Our Mayor of London and MP's from all parties have conceded that London and our major cities are akin to war zones.  Certainly my view of Manchester, having finished my last gang related trial there is that such a description is apposite.  This has been the tag line of many an article by the Manchester Evening News.

So intensified stop and search is a start.  Next I wonder whether broader bases upon which police can secure warrants to secure enter and search homes might be a step in the right direction?  I appreciate that there is a correlation between increased police powers and consequent loss of rights to privacy and related protections.  But those who are not involved in serious organised crime have nothing to fear from such institutional invasion of privacy, and surely there must come a time when as a community we agree that we have crossed the rubicon, or passed the event horizon where the individual's right to privacy is acceptably and justifiably ameliorated by the need to get a handle on a spiralling murder rate.  Another possible step would be more proactive investigation and action upon intelligence.  The police, with all their resources and with all the advances in telecommunication technology receive huge amounts of intelligence on a daily basis.  The analysis of this intelligence is a key component in the prevention of serious crime.  Such analysis however requires skilled and trained personnel.  Sadly, rather than investing in our investigatory bodies, we are cutting resources and recruitment at a shocking level.  If you pay peanuts, I am given to understand you get monkeys.  How many prosecutions are reported weekly in the news that have collapsed as a result of police failings - in disclosure, investigation, or as a result of lack of training?  For my part, I would guess that 70% of the cases I defend involve my cross examining as to police misconduct, police failings, or police incompetence.  I pursue such avenues relentlessly, as I am bound to as a defence barrister.  But I take no pride in my ability to do so.  Nor do I glory in the countless acquittals I have secured through an attack on the investigation.  It is simply a fact of life at the defence Bar today.  Cases are routinely lost that should not be lost.  Killers are routinely back on the street to do what they do - kill - when they should not be.  The criminal Bar has seen its fees slashed to such a shocking extent, that this is almost criminal in itself.  I am led to believe that morale in the Crown Prosecution Service is almost as low as it is currently amongst defence lawyers.  And so those who police, prosecute and defend crime should be paid at a level commensurate with the importance of the rule of law to our nation, to our citizens, to our victims and to those wrongly accused.  There is simply nothing more destructive to life and liberty than crime just as there is simply nothing more destructive to life and liberty of those wrongly accused of it.  These are inviolable truths.  Successive governments have recklessly and perniciously eroded our system of justice, once the envy of the world.  The slashing of investment in the police and remuneration to those working in the courts is, to my mind, at the very least correlated in some way - directly or indirectly - to the deaths on our hands as a community.  Ergo my next putative step - invest in our legal system because, without meaning to be cynical, you get what you pay for.  Having devoted a quarter of a century to my calling, I have never been more disillusioned with the state of the Bar nor more concerned for its future and the futures of those who desperately seek to rely on it - whether victims or accused.

I began this rambling missive with the M word.  Murder.  And will end it with the most ardent prayer that our system of law is not killed off with the same indifference those poor young victims we read of in our newspapers.  If the public only knew of the frightening abyss into which our criminal justice system is teetering and had a sense of the calamity that would bring about, both law and lives might be saved.  Sadly, Joe Public is ill informed and understandably disinclined to invest in crime.  Until he finds himself involved in it.  But my dear Joe at that stage your concern would be like closing a door after the horse has bolted.  I could write endlessly about the state of our criminal justice system but at the risk of boring even myself let alone those inclined to read this post I will leave it here.  My last words are these....in the time it has taken me to write this post in all likelihood someone has been killed who might have lived.