Barristers: Fighting for Justice

[entropy]

Tonight, 10pm, Channel 4.

!Piss Boil Warning!

Documentary following defence barristers defending criminals.

[JoshSm]

'Fighting for justice' - due to the way the system is (rightly) set up to work barristers will defend their clients regardless of what they know or believe about them, and 'fighting for justice' should be true in terms of trying to get a fair & impartial result.

I wonder if that's what the makers are framing it as, or if they're going to go with some sort of 'all our clients are innocent and we're all great moralists' thing, when innocence or morals has (or should have) nothing to do with it?

[119]

We’ve got one posting on PH.

[Paul Dishman]

I watched the programme. It was interesting seeing, even in a limited way, how defence barristers work and the incredible workload.
Given the information supplied about the two cases, the verdicts weren’t a surprise.

[GetCarter]

entropy said:

Tonight, 10pm, Channel 4.

!Piss Boil Warning!

Documentary following defence barristers defending criminals.

..and if you watched it you'll have seen that one of them was innocent. Barristers don't defend criminals, they defend people. Some are criminals, some are not.

[P-Jay]

I've not seen it yet, but I'm looking forward to it.

My in-laws are made up of a lot of Coppers and Barristers / KCs / Judges, always fun at gatherings to hear the arguments between the Coppers who'd like gallows in the station yards if they could and the lawyers who seen it as their moral duty to defend what seems the indefensible sometimes.

[ChevronB19]

entropy said:

Tonight, 10pm, Channel 4.

!Piss Boil Warning!

Documentary following defence barristers defending criminals.

It’s a fundamental right of our justice system that people are entitled to a defence. Guilty or not. And it’s a system that has been adopted by (most) countries around the world.

As mentioned by an earlier poster, 1 was found not guilty.

[mac96]

I haven't watched this, but it does worry me that some seem to believe that everyone brought before a court is automatically guilty and presumably that the only function of a court is therefor to pass sentence.

[P-Jay]

ChevronB19 said:

entropy said:

Tonight, 10pm, Channel 4.

!Piss Boil Warning!

Documentary following defence barristers defending criminals.

It’s a fundamental right of our justice system that people are entitled to a defence. Guilty or not. And it’s a system that has been adopted by (most) countries around the world.

As mentioned by an earlier poster, 1 was found not guilty.

Absolutely and it's worth considering any of the dozens of behind-the-scenes Police shows on TV. Detectives don't bother themselves with proving innocence. They investigate a crime, establish a theory based on their experience and what they can discover and then try as hard as they can to provide evidence to prove their theory. There are very few cases in which they can find irrefutable proof, and if they do the accused almost without exception pleads guilty and there is no trial.

Courts are as fair as they can be, The Crown (prosecution) gets a Barrister, the Defence gets a Barrister, they share the evidence they have with each other and the judge acts as the ref.