James Morton: Settling down at the fledgling CPS

After a few weeks in the same court, teething problems were overcome at the new Crown Prosecution Service. At first, files had gone missing with regularity, with staff and the police blaming each other. 

In one case, a s21 OAPA had no medical evidence and, despite a deal of red ink being spilled and the man in custody, I was instructed to take a plea to common assault. In another, the defending solicitor was about to ask for the case to be dismissed when I noticed that he had the originals in his file.

Overall, however, the CPS was happy that I was a stabilising influence. After a few weeks of being moved around I went to the same court for about two years in what was not an exacting role. The solicitor who covered Court 2 lived near me and we took turns to return that day’s files and to collect the next morning. It was not a court which had a heavy crime list and most defendants were on bail. To look through the files and see what, if anything, had happened since the previous hearing was hardly arduous. The local solicitors were not as tricky as inner London ones. All in all, it was rus in urbe.

If there were problems it was with the magistrates and they were not my responsibility. Once I was sent to Court 2 to finish off a committal.

‘I’ll call Mr Smith,’ I said.

‘Aren’t you going to open?’ asked the chair.

‘My colleague did so last week.’

‘Yes, but Mrs Jones wasn’t here last week.’

Collapse of committal.

There were two in the pool who absolutely loathed each other and would deliberately disagree. One afternoon I arrived for a contested drink-driving to find the place empty. The case has been adjourned, I was told. ‘Only two magistrates turned up, and since it was those two, there was no point in even trying to have a hearing.’

The court was much more informal than, say, Clerkenwell, where the stipe hated the use of initials. One man asked if he could stand near the bench. ‘Bit mutt [deaf] are you?’ asked the chair.

James Morton is a writer and former criminal defence solicitor