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December

I am on the home straight. At the end of my current fixture I will be on maternity leave…yes! And, you guessed it the trial comes to a premature halt with the discharge of the jury. It’s the magic of the bump again (see November’s blog to fully understand this).

It may be just as well that I will be taking this time away from the criminal Bar. Some colleagues are commenting that there may be nothing to return to at the end of my leave. The criminal Bar is certainly changing. I have heard talk before, years ago that the bar as we know it is coming to an end – only for nothing to happen. But I have noticed in the last 12 months the rise of the employed barrister (EB) and the Higher Court Advocate (HCA). Whereas in the past it was a rarety to be in a case with either a EB or a HCA, now it is common place.

Each day when I sign onto exhibit I notice more and more advocates who are working in house for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) or a firm of solicitors. One can not help but notice too, that a significant majority of those names appear to belong to women and other minority barristers.

This (the fact that a high number of EB’s and HCA’s appear to be black or minority ethnic (BME’s)) does not surprise me. At Bar school in 1995 I hung around with a small group comprising of 4 or 5 black women. All of us struggled to find pupillage whereas by sharp contrast our white collegues in our tutorial groups had, in the main secured pupillage before or shortly after the commencement of the Bar Vocational Course (BVC, then only offered at the Inns of Court School of Law).

By the end of the course I was the only one fortunate enough to have secured pupillage. Another two of the group found pupillage later (one I think in house with the CPS) both left the self-employed bar a few years after graduating from the BVC (one of which graduated with a very competent). Of the group only two of us remain in private practice at the bar. One returned to the bar after an 8 year hiatus as a result of dwindling finances and the inability to find pupillage.

The recent documentary “The Barristers” aired on BBC two shows that little has changed. Of the 5 or so trainee barristers followed, all save for the only African trainee secured pupillage. The two white female trainees obtained pupillage first; the only Asian male followed eventually taking pupillage in Birmingham. This despite an increase in the number of BME’s enrolling on the BVC.

So although I recognise and to a certain extent have suffered in terms of a downturn in work from the increase in EB’s and HCA’s, I can not help but feel a certain inevitability about it all. The Bar’s slow pace of change in terms of diversity and retention of BME’s must be a factor in the number of barristers leaving the self employed bar to go in house. That is not to say that the current government’s determination to drive down the criminal legal aid budget to almost unworkable levels is not also a significant factor.

But, if we are to stop this haemorrhage of potential talent and the consequent encroachment into our practices the Bar must modernise and become inclusive as the outgoing Bar Council Chairman, Tim Dutton QC has said publicly on more than one occasion.

Alas, the documentary “The Barristers” revealed that aspects of life at the Bar appear stuck in a time better suited to that of King Arthur and resistant to change. So I start my leave hoping to come back to a career at the Bar, but open to a plan B. Farewell…for now.

Shereener Browne

It seems every trial I go near recently ends in the discharge of a jury or indecision on behalf of the jury. There are times in the career of the criminal barrister that such conclusions are viewed as a relative success. However I am beginning to feel that a straight guilty or not guilty would not leave me feeling, well short changed. Feeling as if had I only did something differently perhaps, I would have persuaded a few more jurors to my way of thinking.

Still, these results are in line with a phenomenon I discovered whilst pregnant with my first child; the inability, while visibly pregnant to lose anything. It seems that jurors instinctively think the pregnant Ms Browne must be right in what she says; why else would she come to court when she should be enjoying a period of confinement. And similarly judges appear to have an element of reluctance in refusing applications made by the heavily pregnant Ms Browne. Perhaps they fear that if they do not accede to my application I may remain in court until I deliver! Whatever the reason (probably dumb luck and coincidence) this phenomenon seems to endure.

The 4th of November found me in the third week of a trial. I had tried to stay up the night before to watch the U.S. election results as they came in. I lasted until midnight. I awoke on the 4th and immediately went online to get the results. And I admit to shedding a tear or two upon watching Obama’s acceptance speech. My 6 year old boy happened upon this scene; me crying over my laptop. “What’s wrong mummy?” I showed him the screen, “Do you know who that is?” “Yes”, he said, its “Back Bama, I voted for him at school. But why are you sad?” “These are tears of happiness. You know, you can be anything you want to be so long as you work hard and want it badly enough.” “I want to be an artist mummy!” I noticed the crayon and paper in his hand before he ran out of the room.

Off I went on my short commute to court. Singing (the song was “A change is gonna come”) and smiling to myself; still on an Obama high…and then I arrived at court. A new security guard was on the gate. I lower my car window and tell him I am a barrister part heard in a trial. He rolled his eyes in disbelief and tutted audibly whilst reluctantly raising the gate. It seems even on the day of the election of a black man to the White House there are some who have difficulty accepting that black people in this country can rise to successful positions. I came back to earth with a bump.

Shereener Browne

October marks the anniversary of my birth. I use to look forward to my birthdays. But, after you reach thirty birthdays begin to lose their appeal. I have found my first grey hair and I am beginning to feel old. Being pregnant and well into your thirties does not help either. My body is sending clear messages that I should perhaps have stopped this child-bearing malarkey some time ago. Still, one advantage of getting older is the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of the past…or is it?

I have mentioned in this blog before the importance of community policing as a vital tool in investigating and reducing crime. Before the Summer break I was involved in a trial where the defendant’s were accused of a string of car-jackings involving various degrees of violence and threats to use violence. The assailants used real and imitation forearms to back up their threats of violence.

Given the level of violence alleged to have been used during the commission of these offences and the alleged use of firearms, the investigating officers may have been justified if they had used high level of force during the arrest and search of those suspected of involvement. However, I was impressed not only by the manner of the arrests, but also by the treatment of family members during the search of the various addresses.

The police officers concerned in the main knew the young men they were to arrest. Some of them knew the mothers of these young men and indeed as part of their intelligence gathering would often attend the address of young men well known to them and speak to the parents and extended family. On one such occasion it was clear that the family member felt able to talk to officers about their concern for the young man in their family who was the subject of police interest.

Notwithstanding the suggestion that the suspects may have access to firearms, their homes were searched with restraint and respect for the other members of the household. Front doors were knocked and the mothers answering them were asked politely whether the police could enter. Only the room said by the family to be occupied by the suspect was searched; members of the family at home during the search were not themselves searched nor handcuffed during the procedure. Nor should they be unless they pose a risk to officer safety or the smooth running of the search. Not surprisingly this kind of approach adopted on the part of police almost always, as it did in this case, meets with co-operation.

It was with sadness and disappointment therefore that I read in my next case the statements from arresting police officers who also searched the homes of very young suspects accused of more than one violent street robbery at knife-point.

The front doors to most of the addresses searched were forced in. Everyone present at the address was handcuffed as a matter of course; even though there was no mention of resistance or obstruction on their part. Mothers and girlfriends were rounded up, placed in handcuffs. In one instance, in full view of an 8 year old child. One mother was handcuffed whilst still in bed, naked from the waist down.

Searches were carried out messily; items of value were tipped on to floors and left as if ransacked by a drug-crazed burglar. One mother looked in disbelief as a police officer searching the area near her television took out the card from her Sky Box, bent it in half and then threw it out of a nearby window. This woman had the presence of mind to video record the destruction left behind by these officers who came to her home with a search warrant legitimately obtained and then proceeded to behave like the secret police in east Berlin before the fall of the wall.

The families in both these cases lived in economically deprived areas of the country populated in the main by black people. It is hard to imagine the police behaving in this fashion if attending to search an address in Belgravia, London. There are undoubtedly challenges to policing these areas of our country; but they are not new. No doubt the bobbies of the 1800’s would have been viewed with suspicion and contempt by the homeless, the prostitutes and the pick-pockets who then lined the streets of the City of London.

We are all losers when the police over step the mark and abuse their powers in this way. Communities who are important allies in the fight against crime are marginalised. The alleged victims usually drawn from these very communities are reluctant to co-operate with the police. It seems some in our police force still need to learn the lessons of the past when the relationship between the police and the people had broken down almost irretrievably. Some need to remember those times and learn how to treat everyone they come across with respect; not as if they were something they’ve just stepped in.

Shereener Browne