James Morton discusses the new DPP, the tact of silks, Hutton and rude behaviour on the tube

The problems with the appointment of the new Director of Public Prosecutions, Ken Macdonald QC, seem to me to be twofold.

I don't think it matters that years ago he had a conviction for sending cannabis to a friend.

Was it Lord Hailsham - or Lord Denning - who said that a conviction for knocking a policeman's helmet off on boat race night would not necessarily be a bar to a judicial appointment? In the context, this misdemeanour seems to rank as a modern equivalent.

Nor is it worrying that he has defended all those horrid people.

That's what barristers and solicitors are there for.

It wasn't a problem that Barbara Mills QC had defended Winston Silcott, so why should Mr Macdonald's clients be held against him?

But that brings us to the first problem.

He has made some fairly political statements on his chambers' Web site and this could leave him a hostage to fortune.

The right-wing press has already seized on the point and it will be a stick with which to beat him when, rather than if, he is obliged to make decisions that do not suit them.

But seriously, what seems to me to be fatal to his appointment is the fact that he has never prosecuted in earnest.

If he is to be a hands-on director - and not merely a figurehead traipsing the conference circuit - this lack of experience would seem to be disastrous.

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It was not only the Victorian barristers who refused to see their clients in prison in murder cases.

I have been sent some papers by a solicitor to show the practice was alive and well in the last quarter century.

The defendant was a boy in his early teens accused of murder and the well-known silk saw him on the morning of the hearing, told him there was no defence and that was that.

Life.

Still there is an argument for not letting high-powered silks near clients.

I had a man accused of murder and robbery.

He agreed the best he could hope for was manslaughter and, since the sentence is all that defendants really care about, I spent much of my time getting him to accept that this wasn't a suitable case for a suspended sentence, not for three, five or even seven years.

After the committal, junior counsel saw him and we worked him up to a reluctantly accepted 18 years if the worst came to the worst.

The week before the trial, in came the silk.

'What am I going to get?' was his first question.

'I'd give you 21', was the reply.

'You're effing fired,' were the client's last words to us.

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A business friend of mine is involved in a bitter divorce suit.

He, as do most husbands, complains that his wife has exaggerated her contribution to life and, having a look at some receipts, it does seem as though he may be right.

What he complains about is that her solicitors have not carried out 'due diligence' before pressing on with her suit.

I say that they must more or less take their client's word for things but he argues that if you have due diligence in business matters, why not in divorce as well? One thing is certain - no one seems to have tried to sit the pair down and knock their heads together.

Arbitration? Apparently not appropriate.

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I can't help feeling that a great opportunity has been lost by not televising the Hutton hearings - it would have been a seriously useful dry run for those who wish to have television in the courts.

I know that Dr David Kelly's family was not in favour of the idea, but surely the more private aspects could have been heard in camera and the rest open to the public.

Recently, I was reading a Paris newspaper of 1827 and came across a splendid row between lawyers and the courts.

It was in the case of the Abb Joseph Contrefatto, accused of the attempted rape of a young girl.

The president of the court ordered the courtroom to be cleared, but the lawyers maintained that this should not include them and that it was their inalienable right to remain.

They were, after all, robed.

This cut no ice at all with the president, commenting that anyone can go out and buy gowns.

He then ordered gendarmes to escort the lawyers out.

The Abb was convicted and received life.

He was branded and placed in an iron collar before being sent to the galleys for life.

The lawyer, Charles Ledru, took up his case and argued that the evidence had been perjured.

For his pains, he was disbarred.

Curiously, the Abb's sentence was gradually reduced and he was released after 17 years.

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I read in a magazine the other day of the no-tolerance enforcement of by-laws in New York.

People have been fined $50 for inappropriate use of milk crates, in other words, for sitting on them, and for lolling over onto a second seat on the subway.

I'm not sure a bit of the latter would not go amiss in the UK.

I am tired of seeing people putting their feet on railway carriage seats.

It seems to be the norm.

Not that one can say anything about it.

A 30 fine on the spot would seem a start.

James Morton is a former criminal law specialist solicitor and now a freelance journalist