Justice & efficiency: Marten/Gordon & other cases

Tabloid stuff, I know: but accounts of the Marten/Gordon trial make extraordinary reading.  There was a way of handling such people in days of yore: they would be declared Outlaws, and lose the usual privileges afforded to run-of-the-mill wrong'uns by the justice system.  'Scofflaw' is another evocative term, though generally applied to much lesser nonsenses than this one.

Although the judge in the M/G case seems to be an experienced one, it's hard not to feel the court wasn't sufficiently brisk when first confronted with their outrageous behaviour.  The consequence was many more months of the same: (and will there be an Appeal to come?)  I'm no criminal justice expert, but I believe that wholly uncooperative defendants can be tried in absentia - correct me if I'm wrong.  Unsurprisingly, this is only a last recourse.  But if justice requires a degree of accommodation to chaotic behaviour on the party of unhinged or even malicious defendants, well, there has surely to be a limit. 

And Contempt of Court is definitely a Thing.  A couple of years ago I was on the jury for a prolonged murder trial at the Old Bailey (in essence, gang warfare).  One of the defendants in particular was fairly uncooperative (on nothing like the scale of M/G, but he was still clearly taking this piss, and caused some gratuitous delays in proceedings.   One of the (several) QCs involved - there were three defendants - called him an "annoying little bugger", which the judge chose not to hear.  But overall the judge was having none of it and kept fairly good order (until the 'guilty' verdicts were read out, which was followed by a couple of minutes of rather scary mayhem).  

By way of example of what a judge can do: in the case in question, a family member of one of the victims (who were, *ahem*, no angels themselves, though nobody deserves to be knifed to death in the street) was caught filming the proceedings in court!  This, as everyone entering court is told, is strictly a "go straight to gaol" matter, which is exactly what happened: matey was gaoled on the spot.  

Contempt of Court is a Thing - and so is Summary Justice.       

ND