Today was all about law & order. Today was Old Bailey, which I will talk about later. I began my day with a typical English Breakfast, which looks like this.
Anyway, back to learning and stuff. We started our morning with going the Old Bailey, which is the most famous of the Crown Courts. Now remember, Crown Court is where all the more serious criminal cases go for judge and jury, and Old Bailey is where they send the more famous and popular cases. Of course I couldn’t take pictures, but not only is no cameras allowed, no phones or bags whatsoever. So I have basically no photos for you today. We learned a bit of information about Old Bailey, such as it is built on the site of the Newgate Prison, which was one of the more harsh and disease-infested. A punishment during one of the King Henry’s originated from this area, where a chef was boiled alive in his own cooking pots because he agreed to poison dignitaries. After the history lesson, we were eventually let into one of the courtrooms. One big difference of the UK courts is the publicity of it. There are public galleries for everything including Supreme Courts. Anyway, we were about to see the closing arguments of the defense in a gang murder case. 10 people were accused of murder because a man’s business partner was mugged by a teenage gang and had is Blackberry stolen. The man is accused of hiring 9 other men to ‘rough up’ the gang, which eventually lead to a stabbing death of one of the teenagers. Did you notice how I said all 10 were accused of murder? That is from UK’s Joint Enterprise rule, meaning if you were an accomplice you are guilty of the same crime as the perpetrator. So it doesn’t matter that only one of the 10 men stabbed the teenager, they are all being charged with murder. This was an interesting concept for me. However, what was not an interesting concept was the closing arguments. The barrister (lawyer) who talked the entire time we were there spoke fairly monotone, more addressing the jury on their duties than stating facts. This was understandable, but still hard to follow and be interested. In the Crown Court, the judge and barristers (lawyers both defense and Crown Prosecution Service) wore the traditional black robes and white wigs. However, I did not realize the wig was more of a hat than a wig. Wigs by definition are meant to cover your current hair and make it appear it is your natural hair color. But I saw many people have hair wildly sticking up from beneath the wig, and women had ponytails that protruded from the wig. Honestly it looked a little silly. But after witnessing about an hour of the court proceedings, the group headed back for a break before our lecture from the professor from King’s College on comparative criminal justice. I used this break to update my blog slightly and finally catch up on email.
It typically contains an easy-over egg, dry toast, baked beans (but not our BBQ kind), sausage, and bacon. And in this case it also has mushrooms and whatever that black thing it. Although this does sounds good to some americans, I am about to break some hearts. England doesn't have bacon. English bacon is American ham. DUN DUN DUN. It is not so bad, and does taste weirdly like bacon that is cured differently, so it is ok. But it does get worse. As mentioned before, their baked beans are not BBQ, they are just flavored with bean water I guess. And although the sausage looks the same, it so not greasy like ours, more dry and much less flavor. Now that I have disappointed thousands with this news, I might as well tell you the kicker. Not only does this place not have bacon, it has no ranch, no gravy. They have never even heard of ranch dressing, and the rare gravy is the healthy stuff. I understand why most Londoner are so skinny, but what is life without bacon?
Anyway, back to learning and stuff. We started our morning with going the Old Bailey, which is the most famous of the Crown Courts. Now remember, Crown Court is where all the more serious criminal cases go for judge and jury, and Old Bailey is where they send the more famous and popular cases. Of course I couldn’t take pictures, but not only is no cameras allowed, no phones or bags whatsoever. So I have basically no photos for you today. We learned a bit of information about Old Bailey, such as it is built on the site of the Newgate Prison, which was one of the more harsh and disease-infested. A punishment during one of the King Henry’s originated from this area, where a chef was boiled alive in his own cooking pots because he agreed to poison dignitaries. After the history lesson, we were eventually let into one of the courtrooms. One big difference of the UK courts is the publicity of it. There are public galleries for everything including Supreme Courts. Anyway, we were about to see the closing arguments of the defense in a gang murder case. 10 people were accused of murder because a man’s business partner was mugged by a teenage gang and had is Blackberry stolen. The man is accused of hiring 9 other men to ‘rough up’ the gang, which eventually lead to a stabbing death of one of the teenagers. Did you notice how I said all 10 were accused of murder? That is from UK’s Joint Enterprise rule, meaning if you were an accomplice you are guilty of the same crime as the perpetrator. So it doesn’t matter that only one of the 10 men stabbed the teenager, they are all being charged with murder. This was an interesting concept for me. However, what was not an interesting concept was the closing arguments. The barrister (lawyer) who talked the entire time we were there spoke fairly monotone, more addressing the jury on their duties than stating facts. This was understandable, but still hard to follow and be interested. In the Crown Court, the judge and barristers (lawyers both defense and Crown Prosecution Service) wore the traditional black robes and white wigs. However, I did not realize the wig was more of a hat than a wig. Wigs by definition are meant to cover your current hair and make it appear it is your natural hair color. But I saw many people have hair wildly sticking up from beneath the wig, and women had ponytails that protruded from the wig. Honestly it looked a little silly. But after witnessing about an hour of the court proceedings, the group headed back for a break before our lecture from the professor from King’s College on comparative criminal justice. I used this break to update my blog slightly and finally catch up on email.
Dr. Thomas MacManus was our guest professor and he brought
up some great points about both legal systems. In America I think we take for
granted the right and ability to not have full government control. If our
government goes mad with power, we have the right to build a militia and fight
back. That is not the case in the UK. Court are obviously very different. Our
Jury selection can take almost as long as the trial itself as lawyers weed out
jurors that may not vote their way. Here, it is truly a vote of your peers.
From the poll selected, 20 names are drawn from a hat and then 12 more names
from that 20. And there you go, that is your jury. Also there is almost no
plea-bargaining here, when attorneys in the states can practically make their
living off of them. There is no written constitution here, which gets really
confusing for me. Instead, they have ‘Constitutional thought” and tradition.
For example, the black robes are worn because of Queen Victoria’s death. Before
that there were robes of all colors, but when she died he judges wore black for
mourning and then never changed and eventually it was considered tradition.
Yeah, I am not sure how it works either.
But the law making is interesting. Before a law is proposed,
it is advertised to the public (how cool is that?). It is posted outside where
people can read it and give feedback. If it is positive it is eventually
written up in law terms and then proposed through the system. We watched a
video on the working of the House of Commons (which I toured earlier in the
week) and I was amazed at what I saw. Men representing the people acted more
like a Frat. They yelled and screamed and laughed at speakers, stood up to walk
about and just generally had no respect. Yet this country passes the most laws
of any other in the world. How is it that our government has rules for conduct
in courts and proceedings and are very strict with them, yet get nothing done.
And here their conduct is rude and childish and they get so much work done! It
was very interesting.
Here is the video we watched. It is 10 minutes long, but I do recommend watching at least a few seconds so you can see how wild and disrespectful they are to eachother.
I also was told the difference between a Solicitor and a
Barrister. Notice I said told and not “I learned”. I believe I mentioned these
in one of my earlier blogs, but I could not figure out the answer. Solicitors
are the general practitioners where Barristers are the specialists. Barristers
have a right to seek an audience with a judge whereas apparently if a Solicitor
tries to directly speak to a judge they will ignore him or her. Solicitors deal
with public directly where Barristers are referred their clients. Solicitors
are mostly small civil cases where Barristers are mostly larger Crown Court
cases. Get it? Yeah me neither. But at least I have a general idea now.
Fun fact! Nearly 10% of the UK’s religion is Jedi. They put this because people think it is rude to ask on censuses a person’s religion, and they put Jedi as a joke.
Since I didn't have much in this entry, I thought I would show a picture of the process of charging my laptop. There is the actual outlet, then the adapter (which changes the UK outlet to a US outlet), then the converter (which converts the UK's 220 power to US 110 power so I don't blow up my electronic), then the actual laptop charger plugin. I know it looks small here, but this was about a foot long and weighted at least a few pounds. This paired with literally the slowest internet I have ever experienced is my excuse for sometimes not updating my blog everyday. Look at this picture and feel my pain.
Well that is basically all I have today. It was a day full of catching up and lots of heavy information. I leave at 4:30am for Dublin, Ireland in a small group until Wednesday night and I am fairly excited about it. I think I will be more excited about it if I had enough sleep to think straight, but I don’t plan on that happening until I am home. Sorry today was boring, I hope to make up for it with my Dublin trip!
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