Giving evidence in a tense courtroom is not something trainee police officers and aspiring solicitor-advocates do every day. Rupert White watches them in action during a mock trial


It is one of the hottest days of 2006. A few hundred metres from the mother of parliaments, in the shadow of Big Ben, stands a building that will eventually become the supreme court of England and Wales. For now, however, it remains Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court. Inside, in Court One, are arrayed 12 jurors, a judge, a Crown prosecutor, defence counsel, several court staff, and one accused. The Gazette is in the dock, charged with affray.



Though this might not be a great surprise, judging by journalism’s occasionally dubious history, this time there will be no outrage in the liberal press as another hack takes the long walk down to the cells. Everyone in Court One is either, for an evening, pretending to be something they are not or playing at what they will one day do for real. Fortunately for the Gazette’s reputation, the defendant, a certain fictitious Peter Amos, is simply being handily represented in the dock by the only extra body in the room.



The Middlesex Guildhall was, at the end of July, playing host to a set of mock trials, designed to aid the training of both trainee advocates and police officers. Set up by Julian Young, a solicitor-advocate and senior partner at Julian Young & Co in central London – in co-operation with the Metropolitan Police and British Transport Police (BTP) – the primary aim of the trials is to help trainee officers receive better training in giving evidence in court, as well as giving them a taste of what it will be like when it happens to them for real. It is also aimed at helping in the training of trainee barristers and aspiring solicitor-advocates.



The Met officers involved in these trials were taken from Beak Street Police Station in Soho. Only a month before, they were seated in a semi-circle at eight in the morning while Mr Young gave them a lesson in what a duty solicitor does and why, and what they might face in court in dealing with a duty solicitor’s client.



Perhaps it was the hour, but Mr Young did not pussyfoot around. ‘Don’t be fooled. My duty is not to society as a whole, it is to my client,’ he told them.



Some of the melodrama seems to rub off on the assembled men and women in blue, though they already have their ideas about what dealing with a solicitor might be like. But being in court, said Mr Young, will be a whole new world. They have so far been inducted and moulded by the police mentality – when they wind up in court the first time, it might be a shock. The transfer of power, he said, will be swift and complete.



‘Your support system disappears,’ said Mr Young, not without relish. ‘My support system’s there in a gown and sash and a purple robe. You’re on your own.’



And this is how they find themselves in Court One – on their own, in the witness box, notes in hand. The officers are giving evidence in the made-up case of R v Peter Amos, who is accused of threatening police officers with a stick at a poll-tax protest. The events have been put together from video footage from 15 years ago, and the officers are being asked to act as if they are the officers involved in the riots. They have assembled notes based on those events as if they were there. It gives them a real feel, rather than just having something described, they say later.



Defending Mr Amos in this first trial of the evening is Colin Pope, a solicitor at Julian Young & Co and a wannabe solicitor-advocate. As an ex-police officer himself, he has seen both sides of the fence.



‘What I get out of this is that it gives me practice in a forum I don’t usually practise in,’ says Mr Pope afterwards. ‘Obviously I conduct trials in the magistrates’ court, but this is a different theatre of law, and you have to step up a gear. At the moment, I don’t have that opportunity other than through the mock trials. I like advocacy, and clearly that means I’d want to go on and develop my advocacy skills to go into the other forums. In today’s exercise, I actually addressed the jury, so that was a new point tonight, a new experience.’



The real point of doing the mock trials is the added veneer of reality that holding them at Middlesex Guildhall delivers, as well getting police officers out of their normal training pattern, which may not involve ‘proper’ court training.



‘This is as close to reality as you’re going to get, especially for the officer,’ says Mr Pope. ‘For many of them, this is the first time they’ve given evidence in any court, not just a Crown Court.’



For the trainee officers from Beak Street, there may also be an added frisson. The man who was previously telling them that his support system is the person wearing a sash now happens to be playing judge himself. Julian Young is bewigged and staring down at them. He is also making sure counsel stay in their wigs until the stifling heat has made everyone slightly crazed – a test for real courtroom pressure. Unfortunately for Mr Amos, he receives a guilty verdict – the jury is unswayed by Mr Pope’s pleas on his behalf, perhaps because the case for the defence rests on Mr Amos belonging to a sect called the Pilgrims of Zava, which requires him to carry a three-foot stick. Whether membership of the sect also required him to wave it at police officers never came up for debate.



The next case, a similar set-up but this time with a little more ambiguity, sees the Gazette standing in for a Mr Bryars, also accused of affray, this time for kicking out at BTP officers at another ‘riot’. Defending is Laura Hocknell, a trainee barrister at 2-4 Tudor Street chambers, London, who started the second half of her pupillage in April.



After being sent down once already this evening, the Gazette’s reputation is perhaps not best served by again being before the beak for affray. Ms Hocknell, however, manages the situation well. Mr Bryars could have been on his way somewhere, and got caught up in the fuss, she says. Not so, say the BTP officers. He was there, it was a riot, we saw him do it.



But, says Ms Hocknell, surely anyone there, by chance or by choice, would have ended up being treated as a rioter? And surely they would have seemed upset at being held back from escaping the mob’s clutches by the very police officers they might assume would protect them? The BTP officers look, unsurprisingly, more than slightly aggrieved. And so the courtroom drama unfolds.



Later, Ms Hocknell agreed with Mr Pope that the trials are useful in training those wishing to gain higher rights. ‘It was really good practice for me, even though it was only a fictional jury, to have those 12 people in front of me and address my speech to them, rather than to the magistrate. And obviously it was helpful to see the way that the police are trained, because I spend a large amount of my time cross-examining police officers. That was another interesting thing to see – what they’re like at the beginning, and to be part of that.’



But can something like this deliver more than just good training? Can it perhaps deliver higher-quality justice? Mr Pope gives a qualified agreement.



‘I think inevitably the better police officers are trained, not only in giving evidence but also obtaining evidence which they will inevitably give at a court hearing, the better the quality of justice,’ he says. ‘You can have bad evidence presented properly or you can have good evidence presented badly, and neither of those serves the interests of justice properly.’



All of this perhaps leads to Mr Bryars’ acquittal, which at least went to simultaneously prove and disprove one of Mr Young’s asides of the night. In terms of why the mock trials pay off in the long run (especially considering everyone is giving their time tonight, and in preparation, gratis), for the police and the lawyers ‘this is a win-win scenario’, says Mr Young.



For the lawyers and the police, this may be. But for the Gazette, it meant a tasty fine and an unpleasant glimpse of chokey. Though perhaps, in that case, it did teach everyone something after all.