Barristers: Fighting for Justice
Barristers: Fighting for Justice
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Discussion

entropy

Original Poster:

6,036 posts

219 months

Tuesday 15th April
quotequote all
Tonight, 10pm, Channel 4.

!Piss Boil Warning!

Documentary following defence barristers defending criminals.

JoshSm

1,678 posts

53 months

Tuesday 15th April
quotequote all
'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

12,913 posts

52 months

Tuesday 15th April
quotequote all
We’ve got one posting on PH.

Paul Dishman

5,018 posts

253 months

Wednesday 16th April
quotequote all
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

30,248 posts

295 months

Wednesday 16th April
quotequote all
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

11,078 posts

207 months

Wednesday 16th April
quotequote all
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

8,137 posts

179 months

Wednesday 16th April
quotequote all
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

5,191 posts

159 months

Wednesday 16th April
quotequote all
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

11,078 posts

207 months

Thursday 17th April
quotequote all
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.