Early on a recent evening, I was pursuing the important task of posting out complaint leaflets and client satisfaction questionnaires at taxpayers' expense to young, illiterate men of no settled address, who had been wrongly accused by the police over a variety of theft, damage, drugs and public order offences, when I was distracted by a scene from the television that other readers may recollect.

There was an unfortunate family leaving the Court of Appeal in tears. They paused before the media to explain the death of their daughter at the hands of a drunken driver last Christmas, and earlier that afternoon had listened with apparent disbelief to the defendants' successful appeal against sentence.


I mused at the family's experience in court. Following pomp and ceremony, there would have been a couple of learned friends employed at state expense, who would have discussed the matter before probably three high-salaried senior members of the profession. There would have been mental gymnastics and anguish expressed over concepts such as credit for a plea, guidelines, the effect of one on the other, and an in-depth analysis of the original Crown Court judgment. The outcome was a modest adjustment to the sentence by 12 months to five years, when all the time everyone in the courtroom from experts to lay observers would have known that the individual concerned would serve nothing like the figure agreed on.


What a pantomime. I am certain it did nothing to enhance the image of our much-maligned profession in the eyes of the general public. That said, I had to return to aforesaid duties otherwise I too would be outside the courtroom tearful and jobless.



Stanley Sumara, Sumara & Khattak, Manchester