When one is young and naive, criminal law seems really exciting. But ultimately, I ended up going down the private law path. This is what happened the day I decided criminal law was not for me.
It all started when I had to stand in for a court clerk who was off sick on a day when there were appeals against sentence. It seems that they bunch similar appeals together. That day was sexual assault and rape day, as far as I could tell. Strangely enough, I can deal with murder better than I can deal with sexual assault and rape. The latter really upset me. By the afternoon, I was very depressed and distressed. But we reached the final appeal of the day. The end was in sight.
Defence counsel went into great detail about what the defendant had done – so much detail that I really thought it was counterproductive for his case. It was an incest/rape case. When I get upset, I have an impulse to chew my nails, but I know I shouldn’t. So I chewed my pen instead. Counsel got to a particularly horrible detail. Snap! I bit the pen clean in half. It was one of those ones which is filled with liquid blue ink. Well, it had been filled with liquid blue ink. The blue ink was now in my mouth.
What to do? I was wearing borrowed robes, jabot and bar jacket. The woman from whom I had borrowed the robes was quite particular. I couldn’t bring myself to spit the ink into the long draping sleeve – she would kill me. There were no tissues in the pockets of the bar jacket (obviously the owner was not a hayfever sufferer like me). I then considered spitting the ink into my glass of water. But what happened if someone at the bar table spotted me? The water would turn blue. I would bring the court into disrepute. I wasn’t even sure what the protocol was for leaving the court room.
There was only one way I could save the honour of the Court. I checked the fragment of the pen. Yes: NON-TOXIC. So I swallowed the ink. The good thing was that all this quite took my mind off the horrible rape/incest case. The bad thing was that the ink may have been non-toxic, but that didn’t mean it was either palatable or particularly kind on the stomach. I felt a bit queasy. Then I realised that I might have blue teeth and lips. I spent the rest of the appeal trying to wipe my teeth and mouth in a non-obvious fashion. I was so concerned about this that I quite forgot to listen to the end of the appeal, which was probably a good thing. When I got out of court, I checked my mouth. No, I didn’t have blue lips and teeth (thank goodness). But my tongue was completely blue!
That was the day when I decided criminal law was not for me.
22 Comments
At one time I worked as a legal executive. The first lawyer I worked for did mainly conveyancing and probate stuff, then I got moved to a lawyers that did family court and rape/abuse cases. I quite because I got sick tot he stomach of typing out the details of the crimes. Your post brought to mind a particularly horrible rape/incest case
Blue tongues – a fashion trend that has never caught on. Except amongst certain reptiles.
What a great story!
Waste bins my dear friend, bins!!
I agree those incest / rape cases are particularly bad, but I also found the mindless petty acts that have catastrophic results also disturbing. A few kids grabbed an elderly ladies bag, she didn’t let go, she fell and hit her head. She died later from a brain aneurism. The police couldn’t prove intent, and they pleaded to a minor theft charge. To see them in Court giggling about it was horrible. The judge yelled a bit, but these kids got off scot free for actions which ended killing a human being.
Justifying your representation on the basis of protecting the system only gives you so much comfort.
Pete, I couldn’t find a waste bin under the clerk’s bench!!! It did pass my mind… Alas.
I also agree with you about cases which are petty but have horrific results. I got totally traumatised by a trip to the Magistrates’ Court as a teen, and decided I’d NEVER do law (obviously I forgot about that later).
Yeah, that kind of thing does get to you after a while. I never actually ate a pen, but I smoked a lot of cigarettes and lay awake a lot of nights thinking about some of the awful stuff I was dealing with. Worst one I encountered was defending a bloke on child pornography charges. To this day, I don’t know why I decided to go through the 700 page police brief (with the pictures). Wish I hadn’t.
You learn to shut off the bit that cares eventually. I got out before it happened.
wow i never really thought that they go that indepth into cases, my law knowledge is limited to john grisham books:)
Thanks for sharing your unique experience:) Maybe you could have made a little paper cup out of a few pages of notebook paper, then just fold it up with the ink inside? paper is suposedly best for absorbing ink:)
Sexual Assault and Rape Day
Indeed what fun?
I can deal with murder better than I can deal with sexual assault and rape
Same. I can conceieve of justifications for killing.
The police couldn’t prove intent, and they pleaded to a minor theft charge. To see them in Court giggling about it was horrible. The judge yelled a bit, but these kids got off scot free for actions which ended killing a human being.
Man if that was my mother those little f*&^kers would have wished they had been put in jail because I would hunted them down. Perhaps that is why no-one has ever stolen anything from me.
Justifying your representation on the basis of protecting the system only gives you so much comfort.
Emma, really I was wishing there was some blotting paper there on the desk. But all there was was someone else’s court book – didn’t feel daring enough to tear out a page!
Legal trials are interesting and disturbing. It’s like you get a peek into someone else’s life while the trial is going on. You learn about all kinds of things which you never knew about before: from the working of complex machines to industries you’d never heard about before to crazy domestic disputes to terrible tragedies. And then the case settles, or judgment is handed down, or a plea is entered and it all moves on. Unless they appeal, of course, and then it has to be rehashed again.
I did both appellate and trial work, but I think I liked trials best because you got to actually see the witnesses and get an impression of what they were like. It was never really like a John Grisham book but there were definitely some dramatic moments (witness collapsing in the witness box, people bursting into tears, public figures giving evidence etc). Mind you there were also moments which were pretty humdrum.
Adrien, that’s exactly it. I can, at a stretch, imagine myself killing someone in very specific circumstances. I think I’d have great difficulty (I can’t kill bloody spiders for starters) – but one can possibly conceive of situations where it might happen. Someone hurting my family is the kind of thing I can imagine making me murderously angry.
Whereas I just don’t understand sexual assault and rape. I know it’s all about power, but it’s not something I can relate to on any level (thank goodness).
For the Legal People here:
While I can vaguely appreciate how much such trials must be very draining, imagine how coppers feel dealing with those crims.
John, I think that’s one of the reasons coppers get ground down or tempted to break the procedural rules – seeing victims of crime all the time, having to deal with this stuff directly day in day out. Coppers get a bad press, and some of them deserve it, but I do reckon it would be a very hard job to do. I couldn’t do it.
I won’t say I had any such single day, but this trial, about a week of which I sat through for my “criminal reading” (aka barrister’s work experience) really gave me nightmares. Incidentally, it was the second trial, because of a prosecutor’s fallacy on DNA statistics and then this too miscarried because of jurors looking things up for themselves – Keir was finally convicted by a judge sitting alone. He got off in relation to another wife who had a mysterious end.
I have to say that the day I decided criminal law was not for me was actually my very first criminal lecture, when Brent Fisse (character that he was) decided the best way to illustrate the importance of changes to the statute was to read the definition of intercourse ‘over the ages’ – I think about 4 or 5 different definitions. That of course led me to think about all the rape and sexual assault cases in which that would matter, and the evidence that would have to be elicited for the cases to be proved … I realised I would never have the stomach for it. (this view was of course affirmed over time).
Criminal law is definitely not getting any love on this thread, so I may be called on to defend the Criminal Bar’s collective honour at some point… although, somehow I think explaining my interest in jurisprudence would be even more difficult.
I don’t know about “not a lot of love” – some of my fondest memories of my (short) legal career are criminal cases – Mostly very minor stuff too. But you’ve got to recognise (and most lawyers don’t) that you can’t shrug your shoulders and walk away at the end of the day every time.
I spent a few years in “criminal justice” as a court clerk and as a solicitor with NSW DPP. Most of my practice in latter – ie about 30/33 or so active files at any one time involved sexual assault and child sexual assault. I recall feeling sick and angry almost all of the time on behalf of the victims. You begin to think that it represents some sort of community normality. I left it all over 10 years ago, now I’m a country town conveyancer and never looked back .
The police couldn’t prove intent, and they pleaded to a minor theft charge. To see them in Court giggling about it was horrible. The judge yelled a bit, but these kids got off scot free for actions which ended killing a human being.
One of the good things Peter Hitchens wrote in his book concerned the leniency of the system against offenders and its relationship to the behaviour of normally law-abiding citizens. paradoxically, he writes, when the law is severe and there are no prohibitions against citizens defending themselves people are a lot less likely to actually want to carry a gun or a knife. Conversely when criminal behaviour is treated as a pathology everyone is potentially suspect. Crime becomes an illness that anyone can catch.
Therefore to people who are indifferent to the dignity, liberty or safety of others the new regime becomes a godsend where they are not punished. This, funnily enough, encourages more crime. And citizens, cynical about the justice system, decide to take matters into their own hands.
Wouldn’t that be the natural reaction of someone, whose lost someone, seeing the defendants get off sniggering all the while?
Good criminal attorneys.
I Don’t think either should be tolerated, law is law, some agree with it, some don’t, but I do not believe people should choose a preference over Murder and rape, end of the day they are both horrific crimes
I’m not saying that murder should be preferred over rape. Both are equally abhorrent. I’m just saying that I find it easier to think of justifiable reasons as to why one might kill (the main one being killing in self-defence).
I Don’t think either should be tolerated, law is law, some agree with it, some don’t, but I do not believe people should choose a preference over Murder and rape, end of the day they are both horrific crimes
Murder is justiafiable in certain circumstances. There are currently many DJs who play 80s Corporate Rock. Their lives are forfeit. 🙂