Rebel Justice - changing the way you see justice
What is justice? Who does it serve? Why should you care?
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We never think about it until it impacts our lives, or that of someone close.
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Rebel Justice - changing the way you see justice
Ep 61: Transformative Justice and the Power of Legal Representation hosted by Simon Natas with Jeremy Dein KC
Embark on an enlightening journey through the intricacies of the criminal justice system with leading solicitor advocate Simo Natas, and the outstanding barrister Jeremy Dean KC. As Jeremy recounts his ascent from humble beginnings to becoming a leading criminal silk, we peel back the layers of his commitment to aiding those ensnared by the law's hard grip.
Our discussion reveals a transformative side of legal advocacy, where deep bonds of trust with clients, especially youths entangled in gang violence, can redirect lives towards hopeful futures. Their conversation doesn't shy away from the gritty complexities faced by defendants under the scrutinizing eye of joint enterprise law, or the contentious use of past behaviors to sway present cases.
The episode takes a hard look at the legal landscape shaped by cases like Jogee, probing the seismic shifts in the requirements for murder convictions, and the disproportionate sentences that can shadow minor players in crimes.
We raise the curtain on the next pressing dialogue, signaling a foray into the intricate struggles of prisoners grappling with mental or personality disorders within the appellate system.
As we dissect the disparities in murder and manslaughter sentences, it becomes clear that the scales of justice need recalibrating. Tune in for a compelling exploration that highlights the urgency for reform and the powerful role of empathetic legal representation in changing lives within the legal arena.
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Hello and welcome to Rebel Justice Podcast. I am Simon Natas. I am one of the founding partners of ITN Solicitors in London. I specialise in criminal defence work and also in protest law. I have about 25 years of experience working in criminal justice and that includes a lot of work in the Court of Appeal, which I think we'll be talking about today, including the Supreme Court case of Jogee, which changed the law on secondary participation.
Simon Natas :I am here with Jeremy Dein KC , who is one of the country's leading criminal silks. He was called to the bar in 1982. He took silk in 2003, became a Recorder in 2004 and has sat at the Old Bailey since 2016. He is the head of 25 Bedford Row, which is one of the UK's largest criminal defence chambers. He has appeared in countless high-profile criminal trials and appeals and has also done a lot of media work television work which I am sure he will talk about a little bit later. So, Jeremy, I wonder if you could just tell us about how you got into law, where did you start and how did you end up? Where you got to?
Jeremy Dein KC :Simon, first of all, thank you very much for that introduction. If I could just correct one thing, I stood down as head of chambers in January after seven great years in the set that I started in, but of course I am still a very proud member of 25 Bedford Row. The answer to your question, Simon, is that I came from what can properly be described as a very working class background. My dad was a waiter in an East London restaurant.
Jeremy Dein KC :I was born in East London, I'm a proud cockney and I wasn't very good at many things at school, quite honestly, but one thing that I did seem to have an acumen for was public speaking. Even though I had a quite thick cockney accent in those days and being brought up in the environment that I was, I had an overwhelming desire to be a criminal defence advocate and to speak for what I regarded as working class people. I was very fortunate that my dad knew a number of barristers through the restaurant who came for lunch in the restaurant because it was in the City of London and he got me my pupillage In those days. That's how it happened and the rest, as they say, is history.
Simon Natas :I mean, I'm always quite interested in what people saw themselves doing when they decided to become lawyers, and whether they actually feel like they've achieved those ambitions. Or, perhaps more accurately, whether they actually feel that the job that they're doing really is the one that they always felt they wanted to do. Are you actually achieving the things, for example, for working class people, for underprivileged people, that you thought you would be able to achieve in your job?
Jeremy Dein KC :I mean, I think, the answer to your question, Simon. I haven't actually thought about that excellent question before, but I can actually readily give an answer to it and the answer is yes. Reflecting upon what you've asked me, which is trying to remember as clear as I can the reasons why I wanted to be a criminal lawyer, I do feel overwhelmingly that the objectives that I sought to meet have been met. I mean, obviously not everyone that I have represented or represent, like you, I'm sure, can properly be described as from the working classes, but, having essentially been a legal aid lawyer for most of my career not all of it by any means I do feel that I've spent much of my career representing the interests, if not strictly, of working class people, certainly of people who are less fortunate in life, whether it be financially, socially, intellectually, mentally. I do. I feel that I've served the purpose of speaking on behalf of people who have been less lucky in life.
Simon Natas :Yes, I mean clearly in the short term. As a criminal lawyer, you help people because you help them through a particular moment of crisis in their lives and hopefully come out the other end with maybe the best result that was realistically on offer. But do you actually feel that as criminal lawyers, we can sometimes go a bit further than that? Do you think that perhaps the work that we do allows us to help people in more fundamental ways, or are we just firefighting for them? Do you ever feel that you've actually changed people's lives for the better?
Jeremy Dein KC :I think firefighting is a very good way of putting it. I mean, I think very often we are firefighting, but I also think that we do change people's lives for the better. Yes, I think that sometimes when we achieve positive results in cases which facilitate a second chance, that's changing people's lives for the better. Sometimes, when we secure community penalties, which you know, for people opportunities that they otherwise wouldn't have had, that's changing people's lives for the better. And, to be honest, when I've represented young defendants in gang crime cases, which I've done a lot of I think we changed their lives the better as well, because I think very often the criminal lawyers who represent young kids who are charged with gang crime, we are the first people actually, or some of the first people they've met, who they can actually trust, and I think sometimes they come out of their experience having gained at least some confidence in the proposition that other human beings actually care about them. So I think there are a number of ways in which, potentially, we do and can change people's lives the better.
Simon Natas :Yeah, I agree with that. Quite often it can be quite intangible, but you recognise that after having that sort of relationship with someone that, having gained their trust in it, you feel that there is something that has changed, and sometimes it's more obvious than that. I remember actually, one of the first clients I represented after we set up for him. It was absolutely hopeless heroin addict and I went through a whole series of cases for him and then years later he turned up at my office and came in and I said, "how can I help you? What's happened now? He expected you to tell me that you've been arrested again and he said I've just popped in to say hello, I just wanted to tell you that I moved out of London, I'm off-arrow and I'm working. That was a great feeling. I mean it would be great if it happened a bit more often than it does.
Jeremy Dein KC :Sorry to speak over you. That's a really nice story. If I could just give the most extreme example, this is a true story. It's very short, but I think it encapsulates my response to the question you asked me and what you've just said.
Jeremy Dein KC :I actually was involved in a double murder trial about 15 years ago at the Old Bailey. It was a street fight in Tooting where I represented a really nice guy and all of them got convicted of double murder. But the convictions were quashed for reasons I won't go into and there was no retrial ordered because it was all to do with tainted evidence. I saw him about two years later at the Old Bailey coming out of the public gallery and I met him in the street and I said, What are you doing here?" And I had a suspicion that he was back watching one of his mates. He said, " I'm about to start a training contract as a solicitor, so he'd been convicted of double murder. His convictions were quashed and he said what I learned from that experience is I want to be a lawyer and he's now a criminal solicitor.
Jeremy Dein KC :That is an amazing story.
Simon Natas :That is extraordinary. So you've had a very long career and you were called to the bar when I was, I think, just starting secondary school, and I feel like I've been around for a while, and I've seen quite a lot of changes in the system during just during the years that I've been a defense solicitor. How do you think the criminal justice system has changed since you became a barrister, and do you think it's changed for the better or for the worse?
Jeremy Dein KC :I want to answer the last part of your question, Simon. I think it's definitely changed for the better. I he sitate to say it's perfect by any means.
Jeremy Dein KC :I mean. What I would say is that when I, when I came to the bar in the 1980s, early 1980s, the, the professions, especially the bar, were incredibly upper class, racist, sexist and exclusionary. The judiciary was even worse. Judges were universally bias and partisan. The summing up of judges was shockingly one sided, you know. Prejudice and bias towards the police was just, you know, out of all possible perspective, police were completely corrupt and got away with anything. So, you know, I think it was a pretty damaged system and the worst thing about it of all was that the people in it thought it was a great system.
Jeremy Dein KC :The worst offenders were the ones that reached the top and you know, reveled in it, and I think they were completely oblivious to how corrupt the system was. It has changed. It's much, much more multiracial now. It's got a long way to go. Judiciary is more liberal. It is, on the whole, much fairer. Summing up of judges is, on the whole, far more balanced and I think the system is more transparent than it was before. So I think it has improved. But you know there are still significant problems, of course.
Simon Natas :Yeah, I mean I agree with that analysis from the perspective of a solicitor. Certainly I mean when I well, in fact a few years before I qualified, because I started working as a police station rep about four years before I actually qualified as a solicitor. So I think first police station I went to was in 1994. And it was even then was a bit like Life on Mars. If our listeners remember the BBC officers were still aggressive, they swore you as a defence lawyer. One of the first interviews I did, I'd advised my client to make no comment and there was a very small chair in the corner of the room. It was like a chair from a nursery school and the officer told me to go and sit in the corner on this little chair because I was advising my client to make no comment, which I refused to do.
Simon Natas :I refused to do, but I mean, that sort of thing used to go on a lot, and that's after solicitors got into the police station. Of course, when you first started, it was quite unusual for you to be interviewed without them at all, but that sort of thing is absolutely unthinkable now, so it's definitely improved to that extent. I wonder what your view is, though, about some of the changes to the criminal law that perhaps were intended to, and probably have, loaded the dice a little bit more towards the prosecution. So I'm thinking about the changes to the law on bad character and possibly changes to the hearsay laws. How do you think they've affected the criminal justice system?
Jeremy Dein KC :I think that, as you say, you know, the law did change radically in 2003 and opened the door to much more bad character evidence and hearsay evidence coming in. I'm going to be honest with you, Simon. I think that there was a strong argument in favour of the law being updated. I could see for quite some time that it was coming, there were going to be changes, that there were cases in which the concealment of previous convictions which were primary, you know, on the face of it, relevant wasn't going to last forever and possibly even hearsay. So I wasn't surprised that those changes came and I was in fact involved very heavily with the CBA the Criminal Bar Association on character evidence when 2003 Act came into force and in fact, the criminal professions managed to water down the proposed changes very significantly In practical terms.
Jeremy Dein KC :I have to say this, and it's my genuine view and I don't know whether you share it I find that judges, the modern day judiciary on the whole, is largely cautious about letting in historic bad character. It doesn't follow as night follows day. By any means, they tend to let in hearsay more. I also feel that juries do give limited weight to bad character evidence. I don't. My experience is not that the mere admission of bad character evidence tends to lead to conviction. I think hearsay evidence can be more damaging. So in the round, you know I understand why those changes were made. They do make our lives more difficult on occasions, but I don't think it follows automatically that a defendant will be found guilty if one or both of those heads of evidence is admitted.
Simon Natas :That's, I think, broadly been my experience. I suppose the cases that worry me the most are joint enterprise, murder cases where knowledge of possession of a knife is a really crucial issue in the case. So you, you'll get, you'll get one defendant who's the principal, is this, who's everybody agrees normally is the stabber sometimes they do, sometimes they don't but but then you'll get secondary parties who are said to have assisted or encouraged and their case. Usually, as I'm sure you you've experienced, really is I had no idea that that principal had a knife, and no idea that he was going to use it. And then they may have a conviction for possession of a knife and and I do find that when those convictions go in they can be really, really damaging. And those are the sorts of, I think those are the sorts of bad character cases that I think worry me the most, because it just doesn't follow but just because the kids being arrested with a knife on a one particular occasion, even more often that they would necessarily know that their friend had one.
Jeremy Dein KC :I think that's as you know is a very concerning aspect. Yes, but you have a real specialty in joint enterprise. I think that is one of the features of joint enterprise allegations. That is worrying, but there are plenty more on there. You know this whole business of young people especially being swept up on a joint enterprise. This is absolutely right. You know when, when a secondary party has a conviction, possession of a knife and that conviction goes in, it can significantly increase the prospects of conviction, even where the primary evidence of complicity in the homicide is pretty weak. I think that is a matter of great concern. Yes, I do, you're right, yeah.
Simon Natas :I want to go on talk about the Court of Appeal in in a little while. Yeah, just because it's it's quite topical and well, I think we'll explain why in a minute. But since we're on the subject of joint enterprise, I thought it might be interesting just to ask, ask you some of your views about how you think the Jogee case has changed things. I think for our listeners perhaps you haven't spent so long thinking about joint enterprises. I have just explained very quickly what the Jogee case was about.
Simon Natas :So before Jogee there was a legal doctrine which didn't really have a proper name. Sometimes it was called parasitic access or your liability, which is a bit of a mouthful. But basically what it came down to was if you get involved in in a crime which they would call crime a, and sometimes that could be a robbery, sometimes it could be a burglary, but frankly, most often it was just a fight in the street. So in af fray or an ABH or something like that, and one of your party killed with the requisite intent for murder, which is just intention to kill or cause really serious injury, then you would be liable for murder if you assisted or encouraged in crime, crime a and you foresaw that the principal might kill with the requisite intent. It didn't require you to intend him to do it at all, it just required foresight, and that set the bar really very, very low for murder.
Simon Natas :There are awful lot of people who have probably been convicted of joint enterprise murder on that basis historically, and in 2016, the supreme court decided that that principle was wrong. Everybody who had been convicted of murder, which means mandatory life sentence, should only have been convicted of manslaughter. Unfortunately, it has resulted in the quashing of only one historic murder conviction, but that was a fairly fundamental change in the law, so now you can only be convicted of murder if you if you intend to assist someone to kill or cause really serious injury. But there's been a lot of debate since Jogee and it's been six years now about how much difference it's actually made in practice and it's quite difficult to discern really and I wonder obviously, having defended in lots of joint enterprise murder cases both before and after Jogee, how you think that has affected the way you do your job and, you think, potentially, the outcomes you know I mean.
Jeremy Dein KC :Firstly, what I would say is that the old framework that you've sort of clearly identified used to worry me so much.
Jeremy Dein KC :You know this whole concept of foresight of consequences. I was also always concerned with as to whether jury really understood the legal directions and if they did that, as you say, the threshold was so low that the capacity for conviction was just so immense. I mean, I do feel more comfortable with what I'll call the new framework, the Jogee framework, even though it's been there since 2016. That is subject to the proposition, Simon, which I'm sure you'd agree with that. I think the whole law of homicide needs to be revolutionized. We need tiers of homicide. This whole business of joint enterprise, quite frankly, is archaic, historic and illogical, very rational, unfair and unjust In terms of verdicts. You said it's hard to discern. I think it is hard to discern. I think it's very fact, specific. My instinct is that it's made the prospect of being convicted on a secondary party basis a bit less likely, but that's about as far as I can go. I don't know. I sense that you tend to agree with me really on that analysis from what you've said.
Simon Natas :Yes, I do agree. I think it is made it a bit less likely. I think there probably are quite a lot of people who would have been convicted of murder, who'd been convicted of manslaughter. I think that's probably what I've noticed. Most is that it's just as much more common I've noticed to get manslaughter convictions rather than murder convictions in joint enterprise cases.
Jeremy Dein KC :I think that's right.
Simon Natas :I'm not sure that all our listeners will necessarily comprehend the enormous difference that there is between a manslaughter conviction and a murder conviction. The length of time that you have to serve if you're convicted of murder is a joint enterprise, a secondary party who may have contributed very little to the eventual outcome. It's a mandatory life sentence and if there's a knife involved which brought to the scene during 25 years, is the tariff, whereas for manslaughter you might get a determinant sentence, maybe 10 years.
Jeremy Dein KC :In those circumstances, I mean, with that now, the case I'm doing at the moment is a joint enterprise murder, the classic sort of street fight that just broke out in a club. My client is accepted to have been trying to break the fight up to the very last moment, when it's said that he gave one. He administered one kick in respect of a larger incident where someone was stabbed. If he's convicted, as you say, he's up for a 25-year minimum term in an instant, which is knowledge that he tried to stop but then lost his call, the prosecution saying and kick once and he'll get 20 to 25 years. I mean it's absurd.
Simon Natas :Totally absurd. It is absolutely absurd and I don't think you really quite appreciate it until you've had a client who's got a life sentence and you've gone down into the cells at the Bailey and you've got somebody who's just has to confront the fact that they, for the foreseeable future and beyond and beyond that, they're going to be imprisoned.
Jeremy Dein KC :One of the hardest things for those offenders is that they don't understand how and why they are being convicted of murder. They just can't comprehend it. Fine, someone has died, but I didn't kill them. Okay, I slapped the victim around the face or I kicked the victim, but I'm not a murderer. But I'm doing 23 years with an indeterminate sentence.
Simon Natas :Somebody I spoke to about this once observed that we've kind of replaced capital punishment with a mandatory life sentence. It was sort of a quid pro quo. This is going back to the 1960s. It's a quid pro quo that doesn't mean anything now. It's just you can kind of understand why that compromise was made at the time to get rid of the death penalty. But now it is just absolutely indefensible and we kind of think we're horrified at the idea that the state could kill somebody, even if they've been properly convicted, but let alone if they may have been wrongly convicted. It's horrifying and of course, because most people will understand that, there is obviously a lot of opposition to reintroducing the death penalty and hopefully not going to happen. But what we seem to not have such a problem with is just burying people in the prison system and throwing away your key for periods of time that are just almost unimaginable 100%.
Jeremy Dein KC :And I think there's another angle to this as well which is the reason why the Old Bailey, for example, at the moment has never been busier and they can't get cases on and people are in custody for two years is because there is no pyramid of offending. When you're swept up under the joint enterprise principle, everybody can test the case. If someone who kicked a person, who died at the hands of another, who stabbed them, was told okay, fine, you're on tier three homicide, with a range of sentence of, let's say, five to 10 years, a lot of people would plead guilty. But if the stakes are, you're going to serve a minimum of 23 years. Everybody fights, so there are multiple trials. You know more than ever now, so it's very complex.
Simon Natas :Well, the Law Commission in fact did recommend a tripartite structure for homicide back in 2006. So the mandatory life sentence they propose to retain, but only for intent to kill cases and intent to cause GBH cases, which is most murders, would be taken out of the ambit of the mandatory life sentence. You could still get one, but normally you wouldn't, and then we would still have manslaughter for cases where there was no intent to cause really serious harm. That was, you know. It seemed like a fairly sensible set of reforms which you would have thought would have been possible, but the then government just wasn't interested. The Law Commission hasn't come back there.
Charlotte White :And that concludes the first part of our two-part discussion between expert criminal defence solicitor Simon Natas and top barrister Jeremy Dein KC. Join us next time when Simon and Jeremy talk about the Court of Appeals system, its issues, limitations and how the system needs to change to allow appeals to focus on evidence and trial fairness. They also raised the important issue of people living in prisons who shouldn't be there at all, people with mental or personality disorders and other serious issues. Rebel Justice podcast is produced by the View Magazine. You can subscribe to the View at theviewmag dot org dot uk and follow us on our social media. We are Rebel Justice on X, formerly Twitter, and the View Magazine on Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook.