Grieving families, pensioners with dementia, and even dead people have been wrongly prosecuted in Britain’s secretive fast-track courts, a major Evening Standard/ITV News investigation has found.Exclusive analysis by a panel of barristers of a sample of prosecutions in the controversial Single Justice Procedure (SJP) concluded three quarters of cases should never have gone through the court. These included cases brought against sick and vulnerable defendants.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Just a few days before Christmas last year, Jenny took her baby girl into hospital.
00:07She wasn't feeding properly, but baby Scarlett's condition worsened suddenly and entirely unexpectedly.
00:15The paediatrician came in and said,
00:20I'm...
00:22Sorry.
00:23He said,
00:26I think you need to come back through.
00:28We're doing everything that we can.
00:30My whole mind was just on
00:35praying, begging her to stay
00:41and to
00:43to wake up for her heart to start
00:49and just for her not to leave.
00:55You were holding her hands when she passed away?
00:57Yeah.
00:59Baby Scarlett was just three months old.
01:02In the time between seeing her baby die and then the funeral,
01:06Jenny's car insurance had lapsed for one single day before she remembered to renew it.
01:12Jenny was still grieving her daughter's death when a letter arrived telling her she was being prosecuted.
01:19Your case will be dealt with under the single justice procedure.
01:22This single justice procedure is a fast-track system for low-level offences.
01:27In a court, Jenny could have been given legal advice to plead not guilty due to her circumstances
01:33and she'd be given the chance to explain what happened.
01:35But that is not the case in this procedure, done entirely on paper.
01:39I felt completely signposted to plead guilty.
01:43And you wrote to the court and you explained the mitigating circumstances.
01:47You told them exactly why the insurance had lapsed,
01:50that you weren't trying to get away with anything, you weren't trying to dodge anything.
01:54No, I put in the mitigating circumstances that I didn't have insurance for the one day.
02:00So I thought, yeah, I'm guilty.
02:03So I'll take guilty and then just say what happened and I'm sure they'll understand.
02:06So you said, I'm guilty but here's the reasons why it happened,
02:09and you were hoping that would be taken into consideration.
02:11We can tell you that you were actually convicted,
02:15even though you wrote back with your mitigating circumstances to tell them what happened.
02:19Yeah.
02:20How does that make you feel?
02:22I'm upset and angry because they've overlooked my child's death by doing that.
02:33They've not acknowledged that my child's died.
02:36This is the most extreme horrible thing that's happened in my life
02:42and I would absolutely think that is a mitigating circumstance.
02:49This fast-track system that convicted Jenny is used for 40,000 cases every month in England and Wales.
02:55Just last month, the same system was under scrutiny
02:58when 74,000 people were told their prosecutions for alleged rail fare evasion could be overturned.
03:05Now, in a joint investigation between ITV News and the Evening Standard,
03:10we've identified flaws in other single justice procedure cases,
03:14mainly for DVLA offences like Jenny's and also TV licensing.
03:18We started by asking a panel of four criminal barristers to independently review Jenny's conviction.
03:24They were unanimous.
03:26It was not in the public interest to prosecute her.
03:28And they all agreed, if Jenny had access to a lawyer in open court,
03:32it would have had a different outcome.
03:34But Jenny's is not an isolated case.
03:37We selected 50 more cases where people with strong mitigating circumstances
03:41had been convicted in this procedure.
03:43The panel of lawyers found almost three-quarters were not in the public interest to prosecute
03:48and nearly two-thirds would have had a different outcome with a lawyer in open court.
03:53We found an example here of an elderly man who was prosecuted
03:57despite the fact that he was in hospital undergoing open-heart surgery
04:01when he was accused of missing a payment.
04:03Another man here with learning disabilities.
04:05He said he tried to pay his TV licence but he was struggling with the computer system.
04:09His mum paid on his behalf but he was still prosecuted.
04:12And here we found one case that we can now reveal
04:15that the single justice procedure has convicted a man who didn't respond to the letter
04:19but he couldn't because he was already dead.
04:22These cases are being decided by magistrates who are volunteers.
04:26We took our findings to their association.
04:28There was no response because he was already dead.
04:31They admit to us mistakes are happening
04:33because prosecutors don't even read the explanations from the people they are trying to convict.
04:39There isn't that process of the prosecuting authority
04:44deciding whether it passes the public interest test
04:48based on what has been written by the defendant and what should happen.
04:52People might think that's a cornerstone of justice.
04:56Is it in the interests of justice?
04:58Is it in the public interest to prosecute this person?
05:00But we have a legal system here where that's not happening.
05:02At the moment that's not happening and it should happen.
05:05And that's one of the most important recommendations that we're asking for change to happen.
05:12How is it possible that someone who's died can be prosecuted in this single justice procedure system?
05:17Well, clearly it shouldn't be the case that that happened.
05:24And it needs to be looked at as to whether checks need to be approved
05:28to make sure that people who are prosecuted are not deceased.
05:33Tristan Kirk at the Evening Standard has been investigating this legal system for the last four years.
05:38He's uncovered evidence of the single justice procedure wrongfully convicting children
05:43and he thinks speed is being prioritised over justice.
05:46You find that magistrates are taking less and less time over the decisions that they're taking.
05:53Some cases being dealt with in 45 seconds, which...
05:57Well, 45 seconds.
05:5945 seconds.
06:00That's not even possible to read the mitigated circumstances in that.
06:03It really confirms this suspicion that people have had all along
06:07is that this is a conveyor belt of justice, rubber stamping people's convictions and fines
06:14without giving them the individual consideration that they really deserve.
06:18This single justice procedure was first introduced to speed up magistrate court decisions back in 2015.
06:25Lord Thomas was head of the courts in England and Wales at that time.
06:29We showed him our analysis.
06:31It's upsetting because they've overlooked my child's death.
06:35And he told us he is disappointed to see it has not been reformed.
06:39Does it raise concerns about the single justice procedure carrying on in its current form?
06:44Yes. I think it is clear from what I've seen, from what the Magistrates Association are saying
06:50that there are aspects of this procedure, very important aspects, that need reviewing.
06:56Fixing this is not difficult.
06:59It really is something that the Ministry and the prosecuting authorities
07:05ought to consider with a degree of urgency.
07:10It's overdue now.
07:11Yes.
07:12Our investigation has uncovered evidence of a system convicting people
07:16who should not have been prosecuted.
07:18Some have been fined, some will pay more for insurance for the rest of their lives
07:22because their explanations and pleas for compassion
07:25haven't even been read by those prosecuting them.
07:28And despite the flaws we have exposed,
07:30this system continues, unreformed, to convict thousands in our courts every week.
07:36Peter Smith, ITV News.