TRIGGERnometry - MURDER TRIAL JUDGE: Why Normal People Do Evil Things - Wendy Joseph KC

Episode Date: September 6, 2023

Her Honour Wendy Joseph KC was a judge at the Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, which deals with only the most serious crimes in the nation. Having recently retired, Joseph has written a book about her experiences, focussing on six particular murder and manslaughter cases. The book, ‘Unlawful Killings: Life, Love and Murder: Trials at the Old Bailey’, was an instant bestseller and is available here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09MG33V6K/ SPONSORED BY: AG1. Go to https://www.drinkAG1.com/triggernometry/ to get 5 free AG1 Travel Packs and a FREE 1 year supply of Vitamin D with your first purchase! Become a Premium Member to receive exclusive benefits https://triggernometry.supercast.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube:  @xentricapc   Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most of the defendants will be 25 or under. And once I say that, you will see immediately what's been happening in our society. Somewhere along the line, an awful lot of people are going to walk out of prison who have spent decades, perhaps as long as they had lived out in the community in prison. If we think they are going to walk out and fit seamlessly back into society, we're living in a cloud cuckoo land. But you want to know what we achieve. If I'm the man in the street and I believe that the purpose of the criminal justice system

is to administer punishment, and we as a society do seem to agree with that. We punish people for committing serious crimes by putting them in prison. What is the point of that? Why do we do that? and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissing. And this is a show for you,

if you want honest conversations, with fascinating people. A terrific guest today, I'm pleased to say he's a recently retired Old Bailey judge and the author of a recent book called Unlawful Killings, Wendy Joseph Casey, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you for having me. Oh, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show.

I swallowed your book basically in an evening. It was that good. And we'll talk more about everything to do with that. But before we do, tell everybody watching and listening. Who are you? How are you where you are? What has been the journey through life that lead you to be sitting here talking to us? Well, it's quite a long journey.

That's quite a big question. I started off as an ordinary school kid down in Cardiff, which is in Wales, capital of Wales. I wanted to be a writer. That's what I wanted to do. I went off to university to read English. Halfway through, my mum said to me, how exactly do you reckon you're going to make a living out of that? So we thought it through together and I changed to law. And so I went to the bar and did that for 32 years, 10 of which as a QC, Queens Council, because we had a queen then.

then I decided for various reasons I just didn't want to do that anymore and applied to sit as a judge. I sat as an ordinary Crown Court judge dealing with jury trials for four and a half years and then was moved to the old Bailey, where I was for the next 10 years. And now you have become a writer as you'd hope. And at the age of 70, I came right back full. circle to where I was when I first decided I was going to be a writer at the age of seven. And what's fascinating is judges generally, particularly people at the old Bailey, which is the central criminal corps, I should explain for people in this country, which tries the most serious cases, mostly murder and some others. Don't tend to write books. So in fact, they don't

write books. And you only retired about a year and a bit ago, and you've written this book. So it's a fascinating look at how decisions are made and the sort of crimes that are being committed and sort of crimes that people deal with. One of the most interesting things in the book is you're obviously dealing with an issue that's highly topical at the moment, which is knife crime. And you wrestle with, you know, the crimes, but also how we've ended up in the position that we've ended up. Now, with your experience, you mentioned your 70 and you did that for a long time. How has the landscape of crime changed in this country, the sorts of cases you would see before you? Have we always had as much knife crime as we seem to have now?

Has that grown in recent years? What is the situation? I don't know the statistics, but I do know my experience. So I would have begun going to the old Bailey as a barrister when I first came to the bar, as a baby barrister, if I was lucky enough to be briefed as junior counsel sitting behind a QC in a big case. And if you walked along the corridors of the old Bailey where there are 18 courts, you would have seen a few murders, quite a few murders, but there have been caught after court with armed robberies, with rapes, with cases of a non-fatal nature.

You don't see that so much at the old Bailey anymore. Frankly, you barely see it at all. Nearly every courtroom for years now will have been occupied with murders or a bit of terrorism. There are other things, but essentially that's what goes on there. Not necessarily murders, let me replace that with the word homicides because there are different ways of killing people. But that's what we do.

And even the lowest level homicides, even, and I don't want to downplay the gravity of them, but even something as, how do I put it without making it sounds as if it is less serious, even something like death by careless driving, you've got a death there. That's what we do there. But most of the courtrooms

will be dealing with death using weapons, and most of the weapons will be knives, and most of the defendants will be 25 or under. And once I say that, you will see immediately what's been happening in our society, the rise of gangs, the links between gangs and drugs, gangs and violence, inter-gang violence. So there has been, to my mind, and in my experience, a sea change. Now, I know that people will produce statistics that throw different angles on that, but I think it is clear there has been a change over the last 45.

years since I became a barrister. And when did you start noticing this change, Wendy? When did the change start occurring for you? Well, I have certainly seen it since I've been a judge in 2007, but I think you could probably go back a decade before that to begin to see it. The roots must have been there before that. They must have been because these things don't drop down out of a clear blue sky. But the carrying of knives has become, I hesitate to use the word, but I will,

endemic in some parts of our society. And it is not limited to those who belong to gangs. But if those who belong to gangs are carrying knives and creating a violent situation for others to be living in, then the risk of the others carrying knives in response is enormously increased. And when you saw these people who were carrying knives and were accused of murder, were there commonalities between them? Did they have, did they share certain characteristics? We've already mentioned the age thing, 25 and under. What type of people were they? Well, I don't want to sound like a bleeding heart, but I guess people that we as a society didn't sort out, look after, care enough about, recognize their problems. There are bad people.

There's no two ways about it. There are. There are wicked people. But if you asked me how many times I've seen someone who in my judgment was truly wicked, not what they did was wicked, but that they themselves were wicked. In the dock, I could count them over nearly half a century on the fingers of my hands. If you asked me how many people have done really wicked things, the answer is I've seen thousands. So the question that maybe we should be asking ourselves is why people who are not essentially bad do bad things and why they're doing it at the age of 16, 17, 19, 21.

And they are certainly based on your experience, they were not doing it as much 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago. So what do you think it is that's causing this increase? We have become, this may be entirely wrong, but my sense is we've become very short-termist. At least we've allowed our children to grow up with a sense of being very short-termist. Now, if I put that in the starkest terms, you don't see many gang members.

in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. And you laugh because it is self-evident that you don't. But what that means is when youngsters devote themselves to that way of life, they're not looking into a future. They're not looking into a long-term future. A lot of them die. A lot of them are seriously harmed. A lot of them die from injuries, a lot of them die from other things associated with the lifestyle, particularly if they become addicted to drugs.

A lot of them end up with seriously miserable lives in their mid-30s. Once you're part of a gang, it's very difficult to extricate yourself and lead a different sort of. sort of life. Once you've been to prison and have a criminal record, put that the other way around, once you've got a criminal record, whether or not you've been to prison, it's extraordinarily difficult to work your way back into society again. And so we've got a whole bunch of youngsters who are not as school kids saying, where am I going with my life? How am I going to, have a family, have a career, they're doing something quite different. And if you see the sorts of backgrounds and lives that they're living,

it's not that surprising. It's interesting you say that, and I'm very keen to explore that, because I suppose you mentioned that we have failed people as a society, which I'm sure there are elements of that that are true. But we've had many people on the show who've talked about the importance of fathers, for example, and family structure. I guess the obvious question is, of the people that you've seen before you as a judge who've committed a serious crime of that kind, how many of them had an active and present father in the family as a percentage? Well, of the youngsters, nothing like what the average.

if you went across the whole population would be. I couldn't put a number on it and I couldn't put a percentage on it, but far fewer than would be the average. I want to be very careful here because I don't want to make it sound as if because I'm not focusing on a particular ethnic or religious or any other sector. So I think it would be fairer to say almost every child that you see in the dock

comes from a difficult home in some way, which is not to say it isn't a loving home, but a home where either there's an absent father or there's illness or there's abuse, either sexual or violent, or there's a mum trying to support a whole load of kids at her wits ends and so not able, just not able to do that and be in the house, a whole variety of different problems. if I tell you that around 50% over 50% of people, not just youngsters, not just those charged with murder,

but of all people in prison are what you might call functionally illiterate or have a reading age of a primary school child and not a child at the end of their primary school education, to me that is it can. not be coincidence. It means we've got a whole section of society that somehow have not, have been, I don't want to say excluded because nothing's been done to positively exclude them unless they have been excluded from school. But we haven't taken the care to include them. and you see the result.

Now that's only an example of one thing. So to go back to the question that you're asking, why are kids carrying knives? What are the problems in their backgrounds? Yes, an absent parent is a profound problem. You see young kids, who are absolutely well-behaved till about the age of 11, 12,

and then the absence of a male figure in the family can, certainly doesn't always, but can lead a child to start to look for other links, approval from older men. And they are absolute praise. to being drawn into gangs. So it's a problem. I think this is a point that doesn't get spoken about enough.

I used to teach in a very deprived part of East London. And I saw some of the children, because I was a primary school teacher at the time, I was teaching year six, which is 11-year-olds. And I knew the ones that were going to go into that were at the risk of gangs because many of them were vulnerable. and these gangs prey on the weak and the vulnerable.

And I don't think that gets spoken about enough. They target them specifically. Yeah. It's true. And the rise in what is called modern slavery and the rise in the number of children being used on county lines, quite young children, who...

I'm so sorry to interrupt. Could you tell our audience what county lines are a little bit? Oh, county lines. Okay. Lines refer to drugs lines. So when you're selling drugs, not when you're selling drugs, when drugs are being sold, phones are used as a method of communication,

advertising, identifying cases to exchange drugs. Usually the phone that is used is called, a dirty phone in the sense it will be unidentifiable in various ways to the authorities. It began in London, but increasingly, drugs, gangs realized that they could sell their drugs out of London, out in the counties. And so they would put drugs lines out in the counties. The drugs lines would be supported by people who took... drugs down there, maybe to a safe house, may or may not be the ones who were selling them, but their job would be to take drugs down there to bring the money back to account for the

money. And increasingly vulnerable children. By children, I'm using the term in the way we would use it in the courtroom, which is under 18, children and young people, do it. And I was going to say, I used, I didn't use that expression. I'll say do it, because we might think they're being used. They are in fact being used, but an awful lot of kids don't recognize that they are being used. They think they are big men.

They think they are part of the gang. They think they're making choices. Well, they are making choices. But they are not informed choices. And the reason they're not able to make informed choices is because they are vulnerable. And they are targeted because they're vulnerable. And they're groomed as well, aren't they?

That's the way I see it. I mean, everything I'm saying, guys, everything I'm saying is only how I see it. You shouldn't think I've got it right necessarily, but this is how it looks to me. No, that's why you're here for your opinion. And Wendy, so how do we go from boys, mainly boys, that I taught who were 10, 11 years old, to being in the dock at the old Bailey with a murder charge at the age of 18, 19, 20, whatever it may be. 16, 17, 18.

Yes. 16, 17, 18. 15, I see them. I've seen them at 14. How do you go? It's as easy as pushing a knife into a body. I mean, it's as easy as that. If you don't carry a knife, you can't stab someone.

If you carry a knife, there is a real risk. The circumstances that you find yourself in will lead you to using it or that the circumstances in which you find yourself will lead someone you are with to using it. And if you have got a knife in your hand, the only difficult thing about killing someone is getting the blade through the skin. Once you get through the skin, there's nothing to stop it. I was listening to an interview with you on a podcast. I can't remember the name of the podcast now,

but you made a very profound point, and you told the story of a young man who deliberately ran over another man and killed him. And the family. Could you tell that story for our viewers and listeners? Because I feel it's actually very instructive as to the importance of family and how this man ended up

in this particular situation? Well, it has to be said that was a peculiarly horrible case. The man who drove the victim clearly was found by the jury to have done it deliberately. But what he couldn't have planned was trapping him

underneath the car. He couldn't have envisaged that happening. He couldn't have known that it would happen. It probably never crossed his mind that it could happen. But it having happened, he then drove for nearly a mile with the man trapped under his car. And by the time he stopped, there wasn't a lot of man under car left, but there was quite a lot of man up the road. and so from the family's point of view, it's very hard to think of anything more painful to come to terms with. This would have been a slow death because he could have been be heard screaming, which is why people turn their cars to follow.

It must have been particularly, peculiarly painful and drawn out. So if you want an example of how a family facing the worst sort of crisis deals with it, that would be quite a good case to take. It has to be said the degree of criminality is about as serious as you can envisage. But in terms of the way the law looks at it, it would not be. merit the same sort of sentence as if he'd been shot by the defendant. And you look surprised.

I will explain that in just a moment, the way in which the law works and the way in which sentencing for murder cases works. Don't let me forget. Come back to it. I'll explain it. But from the family's point of view, it's, I mean, a young man. And so you've got parents. You've got siblings.

I can't remember whether in that case there were grandparents, but it's quite likely there were friends, the sort of thing that is never going to fade in their minds. And judges have no power to, you know, it's what I always say, you can't undead a dead body. Judges can do certain things. They can punish, they can try, in some cases to rehabilitate.

They can try and make sure that things don't happen again. But what they can't do is reverse what's happened, which is bringing us right back to where we were before, which is to say the courtroom isn't where we should be looking to stop crime happening. The courtroom can only deal with a wrong that has happened. And you can't undo what's happened, certainly not when it involves physical hurt or death. To stop it happening, you've got to go way back into schools, into family homes, into the problems of society. Agreed completely. And yet we do have court.

So I think it raises a fundamental question, Wendy, because I know having met some of the other judges of Dole Bailey, I was there for an event. You know, there's a court, a lot of you seem very soft and cuddly, but there's a core of steel to all of you. And I suppose the question that it raises is, what is the purpose of a courtroom? And what is the purpose of the criminal justice system? What is it for exactly? Well, if you ask the man in the street what it's for, he'd probably be, say something

like to punish people who've done wrong. I wonder, and this is something I explore in my new book, I wonder if in fact that's not quite the right analysis. I wonder if what we should be saying is the purpose of the criminal law is to lay out a system that means society, can function safely and confidently. In other words, the people who are being protected by the criminal law are not individual sufferers,

individual victims. They are all of us. Once you say that, things make a lot more sense. It would explain why the process The prosecution in a criminal court is brought not by the victim, but by the crown, the people, in the name of the people. Why, we have the Crown Prosecution Service, where we have a barrister who is on his feet or a solicitor on his feet representing the crown. That is the prosecution. It would also explain why the criminal courts are the one set of courts where the judge doesn't make the vital decision.

The vital decision, guilty or not guilty, is made by the people or those who represent the people. So if you start analyzing it in that way, the whole thing begins to make a lot more sense. You're asking then what the court can do. Well, I guess I'm asking something else, actually, which is what is it there to do? Because you talk about punishment, I'm sure punishment is part of it. And I want to explore with you whether punishment works, actually, right? But I think there are, you mentioned it's about protecting society and creating a safer society. That, I think, is where a lot of the conversation is interesting because I don't, even if punishment doesn't necessarily work, some people might argue, well, putting violent people in prison and keeping them there is making the rest of us safe.

Yeah, I'm not, I can't remember the exact question you originally asked me. Yes. But I'm not saying that the court is there. to do the things I've just described. I'm saying the law is there. That's why we have the laws. Yes. If you ask what the court can do,

well, we say, don't we, that juries are supposed to acquit the innocent and convict the guilty. It's not actually what we ask them to do. if you actually look at what we ask a jury to do, it isn't to acquit the innocent and convict the guilty. We ask them to convict those they are sure are guilty and to acquit everyone else.

It's not the same thing, and that's something else I'm exploring in this new book that I'm writing. It's a very different thing. If you ask what the judge can do, Well, the answer is the judge can't do what an awful lot of victims or bereaved want it to do. The judge can't administer vengeance. What the judge can do is impose a punishment as laid down by Parliament that he can do. and what the court system can do is to identify those where guilt has been proved.

Yes. I understand. What I'm asking, I suppose, is a bigger question, less about just the court itself. And I appreciate that as a retired judge, that's your focus. But I'm curious to think about if your job as a judge is to administer punishment on the basis of laws passed by Parliament on behalf of the people, what is the point of punishment? Well, first of all, it isn't only punishment. A judge at the O' Bailey will be primarily interested in punishment because of the level of the crime being administered. But if you look at the principles of sentencing, a judge's first job might be not to put someone in prison

if there is any other viable option. And viable options will include things, where crimes are not so serious, where there is no appropriate punishment but taking away someone's liberty, then they'd be looking at probation, they'd be looking at training, they'd be looking at ways of helping a defendant. It's not a popular way of looking at things because if a defendant's been found guilty, they have done wrong. But it's in society's interests that we stop wrong happening again. And very often sending someone to prison is a surefire way of making sure they continue to offend because you put them in a situation where they are mixing with and only with wrongdoers,

people whose mindsets are of wrongdoing. So a judge's job isn't necessarily and only to punish. A judge has to have in mind a whole series of different things, including rehabilitation, trying to in some way recompense the loser. There are an awful lot of crimes outside crimes of violence where you can approach putting things right by the payment of money. you know, where there's been a crime of dishonesty.

There are some, not all crimes of dishonesty, but there are some where you can put it right by making someone pay money back. So a judge has many different tasks in finding the right sentence. But you want to know what we achieve. And I believe that the purpose of the criminal justice system is to administer punishment. and we as a society do seem to agree with that.

We punish people for committing serious crimes by putting them in prison. What is the point of that? Why do we do that? Well, a number of different reasons. First of all, to ensure that, let me go one step back. You don't put people in prison only to punish. You put people in prison to protect society as well. Well, to the extent that we keep giving longer and longer sentences, query, does that protect society?

Well, the answer is, in the short term and in the long term, if it's a very long sentence, yes, because if your door is shut and the cell is locked, you're not out on the street committing crimes. So to that extent, you can protect people from really, really dangerous defendants that you just think are never going to stop offending. You can lock them up for life, in fact, although we rarely do, but in some cases we do. You can lock them up in the short term, but there will come the moment. in almost every case that the door opens and they walk out. At the moment, by way of punishment, by way of saying, you have done something so wicked that society says, you need to go to prison for X number of years.

We are locking people up for longer and longer. Let me go back to something we raised before and then draw it in to this question that you've asked me. We were talking about the sentences for murder. When I began to do murder trials at the bar, the average sentence for murder was the sentence, there's only one sentence, it's life imprisonment, but a judge's job is then to say,

how long a defendant must serve, a prisoner now, must serve before he or she can have. apply for parole. The average time when I first came to the bar was between 10 and 15 years. The average time now is far closer to 25 years and that is because of legislation that has been brought in specific laws. So for example, if you kill someone with a gun, the starting point is 30 years minimum before you can apply for parole. If you kill someone with a knife or other weapon taken to the scene in certain circumstances, almost all circumstances where knives are used in public will be covered here, the starting point is 25 years. For all others, the starting point is

15. Now the starting point isn't the finishing point. It can go up. or it can go down. And those are the guidelines for adults, let's say anyone 18 and over. They are different for people under 18 and lower. But you can see immediately, can't you, that somewhere along the line an awful lot of people are going to walk out of prison,

primarily men who have spent decades, perhaps as long as they had lived out in the community, in prison, perhaps longer. In prison, they are living in a male society in which they are never really challenged to take responsibility for their day-to-day lives. They are given some help in learning how to manage their lives, but they're never responsible for really what happens. They've almost never had a normal relationship with anyone, certainly no woman, not necessarily someone they really love. They've never lived with children for, you know, since they were young, really young.

Now, I've only got to say that for you to see that if we think they are going to walk out and fit seamlessly back into society, we're living in a cloud cuckoo land. So the answer is I'm not sure what we're achieving other than to be able to say this is so serious that we as a society feel

we must mark it by these very long sentences. It's not for me to say whether we've got that right or we've got it wrong, but what I can do is to point out the results of doing it. Well, this is why I'm asking you. I appreciate it may feel like I'm a pit bull

with a bone here, but I'm curious to explore the big issue here, which is why we punish people in this way. Now, you're essentially saying, first of all, it's a statement of our opinion as a people about how serious and grave an offences. And also then, obviously, there's the protection of the public for the duration of that prisoner's incarceration. However, your point is well taken, which is once the person comes out, they're not adjusted to society at all. They probably won't adjust it to society before, but now they're 35 years old or 40 years old.

Or 50 years old. And they've lived an entire life in a very abnormal situation in which none of the normal and ordinary and healthy ways of being have been not only encouraged, but even available to them. I understand that.

Which to me sounds like partly a strong argument for prison reform, if I may say so. However, you're nodding your head there. It's obvious we haven't got our system right. Yes. The one word we haven't used, which is the rationale for sending people to prison,

and the one word that Parliament would use is deterrence. Yes. We make longer and longer sentences because we say it deters others. Look, You can deter some single mother who is desperate to feed her kids from saying something that isn't true on a social security form. You can deter someone from doing that. But it is self-evident that we are not deterring young people from carrying knives by imposing longer and longer sentences. If you look at the law that brought in 25-year starting point for the carrying of the use of a weapon that's being carried to the scene,

for which, generally speaking, substitute the words young people carrying knives. The law was part of a thing called the Criminal Justice Act in 2003. Look at what's happened since 2003. I don't know how many we've deterred, but life time has gone up and up and up. We're not deterring people. And that has something to do with the, if I may use the word, the demographic that we're aiming at. These are young people, maybe not more as young as 16 and 17. But current scientific thinking tells us that people's brains aren't fully formed.

They're not making the best judgments until they're what, in their mid-20s? So trying to deter kids of 16 who are, and I will use this expression running with the pack by saying you know that if you kill someone and get caught and get convicted, you are looking at a very, very, very long sentence. So don't do it, dear, isn't working. It just isn't. And it's not likely to because of the way that kids, and I'm not saying these kids, I'm saying all youngsters are.

They don't think in that way. They don't have a reverse gear. A lot of them hardly have a break to apply. The accelerator is out of control. The fuel on which they're running is high october. attain, excitement and belonging to a group can be a motivating factor that is there, in their faces, on a day-to-day basis. And the distant threat of if this happens and if that happens and if the third or fourth thing

happens, then that punishment will follow doesn't. compute. You're too young to remember the Daleks where they used to say it does not compute. But it doesn't for these or for some of these kids. And of course we should have deterrent sentences in certain circumstances. But we should first of all maybe stop and think what we're trying to achieve. And what we're trying to achieve, and what we're trying to achieve, and what we're trying to isn't to punish wrongdoers. It's to stop people becoming wrongdoers. It's not to do something with the people who walk through the door of the court.

It's to have a society in which people are not walking through the door of the court. It's what we should be trying to do is do judges out of a job. how do you, let's say you've got one of these kids in front of you and you're judging the case, and they've done something heinous. It doesn't have to be a kid, it could be anyone. How do you detach yourself emotionally from hearing the heinous details of a crime and then being objective enough to pass a judgment dispassionately, which is what you need to do in order to administer justice?

A couple of things. Firstly, we don't judges, don't drop down out of a clear blue sky. In this country, to be a judge, you have to have been a lawyer of considerable experience before you can apply to become a judge. Unlike other countries, we don't have judge school, don't have a judge BA. you come to the bench via a career in the law. Most judges, not all, but most, have been criminal barristers. When I say most judges, most judges dealing with criminal cases have been criminal barristers. When you're a criminal barrister, you are much more hands-on with the deep and dirty stuff.

You are in the cell with your client talking to him every day. You are hands-on with the victims if you are prosecuting. You are working with the officers who have been at the scene. You are looking at the depths of the evidence, some of which is just never going to be shown to the jury. But before you get on the bench, you know what's coming. And if you're not able to deal with it, you wouldn't be doing that job. I think that's the first thing.

Whether we become hardened, enured, whether we're a rotten lot in that sense, I don't know. The second thing is, of course you have to detach yourself, but there's a difference between being sympathetic, which is useless in a judge. It's a waste of space. It's a waste of emotional energy and it makes you a worse judge. There's a difference between being sympathetic and empathetic, which is something I think every judge should be. You need to be able to understand where people have come from.

I don't just mean defendants. You need to be able to understand everyone in your courtroom. a judge of course has to know the law except you don't have to know the law you have to know where to look at the law you don't have to have everything in your head you have to be able to handle it find it and handle it

but what you do have to be to be a good judge in a jury trial is a good man manager a good person manager You need to be able to manage a courtroom packed with people. Defendants, witnesses, jurors, barristers, public gallery, staff. You have to know what's going on in every quarter of your courtroom.

That comes through so strongly in your book. As I was reading it, I can see how carefully you think about the managing different people and what this person is about to say. and why they're saying it, it's fascinating. Yeah, and I mean, if you can't do that, certainly at the old Bailey, where we're dealing with really serious stuff, trial after trial is going to go wrong.

You know, I've had cases where I've certainly had one case where I had nine defendants in the dock, so it must have been way before COVID, because we haven't done that since COVID, but nine defendants in the dock, eight of whom belonged to one, family and one of whom didn't. And the blame was being put by eight on the one. And the one was not coping. And it was very hard to know what to do because he was becoming unmanageable.

I can control what happens in the dock in my courtroom. What a car is? do is to control what is happening down in the cells, although I can make sure my staff down there keep an eye on things, still less can I control what happens in prison vans or back in the prison. I can contact the governor and say, please make sure this prisoner is on a different wing to the others, but what I can't do is stop the others speaking to friends of theirs who are on the other wings. I can't control that. In the end, what we did, really because everyone wanted, well, the one was happy with this happening and because it was the only way of making the trial viable was he was in such a state that I didn't think it was right or safe to have him

brought to court and we linked up a video and he remained in prison. in the video suite and day after day joined in from the video suite. And there were times when he wasn't coping and he got up and he walked out. The same thing could have happened in the courtroom. The jury could see what was happening. There are ways of managing most circumstances. I mean, I've had another case where, the victim was a young girl who was wholly innocent,

completely and utterly innocent. It was a case of mistaken identity when she was stabbed to death. And the public gallery was packed with not just her family, but with her school friends, with local people. and they all arrived on the first day wearing t-shirts emblazoned with her face and her name. And one entirely understands how they felt. But they were sitting right opposite the jury. And when the defendant's barristers said,

how can they have a fair trial? and the jury are staring into the image of this dead girl, emblazoned upon T-shirts worn by young school friends of hers at local people who knew and loved her. They have a point too. And so one had to find a way of balancing the issue. the issues there. One had to find a solution.

And believe me, there is no textbook that gives you the answer to that. And you can only do it by understanding what's going on and using a bit of imagination and finding some solution. And what was the solution in that particular case, Wendy? In that particular case,

I said to those, I mean, this wouldn't necessarily have worked, but it did. I said to those in the public gallery that I entirely understood why they were doing what they were doing, that I entirely understood they wanted to keep the image of this girl close to their hearts, that they might reflect upon the nature of the trial and the purpose of the trial, and the fact that she would be closer to their hearts if they turn their t-shirts inside, out. And they all went off and turned their t-shirts inside up. Wow. Wendy, what are you? I mean, this is, do you ever feel that, I think the problem is worse in America than it is over here. But if you have money and access to money,

you stand a much better chance of getting off because you have access to better lawyers, barristers. And have you ever seen that mismatch in court where you have an inexperienced barrister against a high-level QC? And you're thinking to yourself, there's two different questions there. The first is whether you can buy better representation. The answer is that almost every defendant in a murder trial, almost all of them, will be legally aided. I mean, even if they're making some sort of contribution because of legal aid rules, almost all of them will be on legal aid. They'll almost all of them will be in custody.

So mostly that isn't a question that arises. However, we have a thing called the Cabrank rule. where for barristers, top to bottom, beginning to end, if you are instructed by a solicitor, or even directly by someone, in a particular case, if your experience and knowledge is such that you are a suitable person to handle the case, you should do it. It's like cabs pulling up. You're not entitled to say, I will.

take that case. And so by and large, very, very top barristers dealing with murders are on legal aid. The separate question is, do you get a mismatch? And the answer is, yes, you can. Now, you can get a mismatch. Whether someone's paying for privately or not. You can get a mismatch even if both lots, if one's on legal aid and one's been paid by the Crown Prosecution Service. And there has in the past been complaints that better people defended sometimes than were employed by the CPS. That isn't my experience. And some of the absolute top people who prosecute murders are engaged by the Crown prosecution service. So I think that it is at a lower level of crime that you tend to get a mismatch.

That can happen. My experience is if you get a really dim, I say that with hesitation and with the greatest of respect to all my learned colleagues, dim person on one side and a really clever person on the other side. It's the dim person who usually gets the. result because the jury see it. The jury can see it and it worries them. They worry if they think someone isn't getting a fair crack of the whip, one side or the other isn't getting a fair crack of the whip. So I don't think it necessarily in a criminal case makes a huge difference. But there is

no doubt that if you've got a lot of money, particularly in fraud cases, where sometimes a lot of money is swilling around, you can go to top people. And I wouldn't say it never happens. But I would say I do not think that it is a big problem in serious, violent crime, which is the end of the market that I've been dealing in. That's very interesting. Wendy, we've got about five minutes before we go to questions from our audience on locals. but I was curious, we've been obviously talking about many of the problems with the system that we have in this country. Would you say that the British criminal justice system is the envy of the world? I think it is, which is not to say we've got everything right.

Of course. It's degrees of getting it wrong, isn't it? We have a criminal justice system in which, Although people have expressed disquiet and the strongest disquiet, they feel able to do that and to point out what's gone wrong and to demand that it's put right. Deep down, people... This is Euphoria Calvin Klein, the new elixir collection,

featuring three perfume intense scents, inspired by a unique orchid accord paired with vanilla, Each with its own distinct attitude, each with its own universe. Bold elixir. Sensual, woody, addictive, magnetic elixir, sweet and romantic like a lingering touch. Solar elixir, a radiant expression of joy, ultra-concentrated for amplified impact and lasting power. Find your euphoria. Discover the euphoria elixir collection by Calvin Klein.

Not all people, but most people believe that we can achieve something approaching justice. If they didn't, the system wouldn't work. If defendants didn't believe that they were going to get justice in a courtroom, they could put a stop to our system working like that. If they didn't cooperate, if they didn't instruct their solicitors and barristers, if they refused to get into a van to come to court, if they refused to come up to court, if they refuse to listen to the evidence or refuse to give evidence, if they refuse to cooperate in the trial procedure, we couldn't make the trial procedure work.

The same with jurors. If people weren't willing to give up their time and their energy to leave behind their own problems to sort out society's problems, we couldn't make the jury system. work. So there is an inherent belief. There is one area we do have a problem with, and that is certain witnesses in certain circumstances being frightened to come to court and not wanting to cooperate. Judges have powers to make it easier. Judges have powers to grant anonymity. They have powers to allow a witness to give evidence from outside the courtroom in certain circumstances. They have powers to allow the evidence to be prerecorded, both in chief, giving the account to the crown and now in cross-examination as well. So there are all sorts of things the judge can do. So there are many, many different problems, but I think it is true that people still believe that the system we've got, with all its faults, it's slow, it's expensive, but with all its faults, the actual system in the courtroom, I'm not saying what happens before or what happens after, but the same.

system in the courtroom of identifying guilt and passing a sentence, I hope, is still the envy of the world. Very interesting. So you retired last year, which gives you some leeway to say, you know, I did this for many, many years. If I were in charge, here's one or two tweaks I might make or changes I might make. What would they be? One of the things I would do, and it echoes what I've been saying before, is I'd go right back to the schools. Not this time to pick up the youngsters who might be committing crimes, but because I don't think that we as a nation understand our system. and that is not the fault of the nation. It's the fault of people like me, of the barristers, of the judges, of the system. The system's there for people, and we ask people to trust it,

and we ask them to participate in it as jurors, as witnesses, and so forth. They are entitled to understand it. That's why I've written the book. that's what it's about. I spent years in addition to the day job as what is called a diversity in community relations judge and I know how puzzled people are by the system. I'd go right back into the schools

and make teaching the system part of the curriculum, part of civic responsibility, and I would teach children how to see, it down in groups of 10 or 12 and talk through an argument, teach them how to listen to each other, how to express their views, how to be willing to adjust their views without losing face if they find they are persuaded by another argument. That is what we ask jurors to do, and they come to it blind.

They come to it for many of them, never having done it before. It's a credit to the human nature that they do so well, but we could make it a lot easier for them. Wendy, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on the show. The final question is always, what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be? I would like to pick up something which we have spoken about,

but we've only spoken about it in terms of prisoners. And that is problems with literacy. There are problems with numeracy as well, but problems with literacy in our society are real. 50% more than 50% of those in prison. are functionally illiterate, or at least have the literacy level of a primary school child and a young primary school child. No one in our society can function without some basic literacy skills.

And if you think about what you are deprived of, and I'm not just talking about prisoners. right across the country. It's not just that people have difficulty with dealing with everyday things. What if you can't read what's written on a label when you're buying something in the supermarket? What if you can't read the letter that comes through the door that says your electricity is about to be cut off unless you do X, Y and Z? What if you can't use a computer? What if you can't fill in a job application?

What if you can't do what your children are doing and learning to do at school? Can't read to them, can't work with them. What if you can't remove yourself from what is sometimes a pretty grim reality by reading a story that takes you somewhere else? You know, guys, if you or I were locked up in a cell, the first thing we do is ask for a pile of books. What if you can't get your head out of that cell because you can't read? What if you can't talk to people about the things that you are reading,

can't attain a better job or any job because you can't read? So the one thing I would tackle, because I think it hits at so many different levels, is the different things that people lose by not being able to read. And I've actually been doing a bit of work now I'm retired with a thing called the Sheriffs and Recorders Fund in which we have set up a specific charitable arm to deal with young people in prison who are having difficulty with literacy skills.

That's so interesting that you say that. I was just watching the other day an interview with a drug deal in America, in L.A. I think his nickname was Freeway Ricky. He went to prison for selling millions and millions worth of drugs, illiterate, and he learned to read in prison. He read a whole bunch of books and came out and became a very successful business. Yeah, yeah. Because he was smart.

And when he could read, he could read the things that would make him smarter and better. And then he didn't need to sell drugs to make lots of money. That is interesting. So that's one of the things that the works being done at a prison for young people on the east side of London, people between the ages of 15 and 25, 16 and 25. No, I've got that wrong, 18 and 25. But it's one of those things that I think people like me really ought to be trying to help with. That and a million other things.

Fantastic. Well, Wendy, we're going to go to a bunch of questions from our supporters that only they will get to see the answers to our locals. But unlawful killings, like I said, I inhaled it in an evening. It's that good. And thank you so much for coming in and talking to us as well. Went to us, really appreciate it. My pleasure. Thank you so much.

Head on over to locals, guys. Have you had any case that made you lose faith in humanity? This episode is brought to you by Netflix's remarkably bright creatures. What if a Pacific octopus held the key to a mystery that could heal your heart? Well, that's Tova's reality. An elderly widow working at an aquarium. Tova forms an unlikely friendship with the cramudgeonly Marcellus, whose remarkable intelligence leads her to a life-changing discovery.

Remarkably bright creatures is now playing only on Netflix. Thank you.