The Gazette 1972

Lawyers attack Law Revision moves

1 lie Criminal Law Revision Committee, which has

proposed fundamental changes in the criminal law

svstem, was accused yesterday by the National Council

for Civil Liberties of "giving respectability to police

•Malpractices".

Mr. Tony Smythe, general secretary of the Council,

said the police were ignoring normal safeguards for

suspected persons more and more.

Yet the committee, in suggesting abolition of the

caution during interrogations, had rejected any counter-

balancing safeguards such as the right of an accused's

solicitor to be present. He promised an unremitting

campaign by the Council to prevent the proposals being

"uplemented in their present form.

Justice, the all-party lawyers' organisation, opposes

the proposals as they stand. Mr. Tom Sargent, its secre-

tary, said the Judges' Rules might have provided safe-

guards, hut at present they were inadequate and often

•lot applied or adhered to.

Justice had proposed to the committee that if the

caution were to be abolished, tape-recordings should be

Used during interrogations; alternatively, only magis-

trates should be allowed to carry out questioning of

suspects. But the Criminal Law Revision Committee

•"ejected both these proposals as unworkable.

Mr. Sargent said : "We believe that a rota of magis-

trates could be worked out to do the job. We have also

suggested that the decision to prosecute should be taken

out of the hands of the police and entrusted to an

independent authority."

Th e committee's proposals—which also include com-

pelling an accused person to enter the witness box and

disclosure during a trial of his criminal past—have

caused consternation among lawyers and civil liberties

groups.

The police welcome the suggestions unreservedly.

One police chief has commented : " The criminal trial

today is less a test of guilt or innocence than a compe-

tition . . . a kind of show-jumping contest in which the

rider for the prosecution must clear every obstacle to

succeed."

Ma ny lawyers hold that abolition of the caution

would not succeed in catching the professional crim-

inal : it would trap only the unwary and those ignorant

of police procedures.

Mr. David Naplcy, chairman of the Law Society's

Standing Committee on Criminal Law, said that guiltv

people were alert to their rights : only those confronting

a policeman for the first time were likely to need re-

minding that they were not obliged to say anything.

The Observer

(9th April 1972)

First Woman Judge at Old Bailey

A woman will sit as a judge at the Old Bailey for the

first time today. She is Miss Recorder Heilbron, Q.C.,

who has sat as a Recorder at Burnley since 1956.

As a barrister, Miss Rose Heilbron, Q.C., appeared

I°r the defence in the famous Cameo mu r der trial in

Liverpool in 1950, and at the Old Bailey in 1956, when

fic successfully defended an accused in a Soho affray

se that became known as "the fight that never was".

Miss Heilbron, in private life married to a doctor,

y^"ill sit as a judge at the Old Bailey under the new

Judicial svstem which came into force on J a nu a ry 1st

because of the Courts Act of 1971.

J obbe ry case

The Act abolished the traditional Assize Courts and

Quarter Session Courts and replaces them with six

Crown Courts throughout England and Wales. Trials

at these Crown Courts will now be presided over bv

circuit judges which will include High Court judges and

part-time Recorders.

Miss Recorder Heilbron's first case will he to try a

19-vear-old youth sent for trial on hail last April and

accused of robbery.

In court. Miss Heilbron, 56, will be addressed as

"Mv Lady."

She is not the first woman barrister to achieve high

legal office. Th at distinction goes to Mrs. Justice Eliza

legal office. Th at distinction goes to Mrs. Justice Eliza-

beth Lane, who was appointed a judge of the Probate.

Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court

(now the Familv Division) in 1965.

Daily Telegraph

(4th January 1972)

Curbs sought on sale of l and-

Policy Statement soon

I'he Taoiseac.h, Mr. Lvnch, and the Minister for Lands,

Flanagan, arc to be asked by a number of County

^uniinittees of Agriculture to introduce legislation as

°on as possible prohibiting the sale of land to non-

nationals or others who have not been permanentlv

sident in the country for a period of ten years.

The request is being made by the committees to

ert the possibility of land speculation if Ireland be-

e t l e s a member of the EEC and to tighten the controls

CUr

rentlv in operation under the 1965 Land Act.

Mr. Flanagan is also being pressed to change the

^ u c t u r e and powers of the Land Commission to en-

M>le it to decide priorities in an EEC context and

function as a land bank in the restructuring of agri-

cultural holdings.

It is understood that the Government's land policy is

to be reviewed by the Cabinet in the near f u t u re and a

number of important decisions are likely to be taken on

extending the present time limit of eleven months for

leasing land for grazing and on the whole question of

the Department of Land's farm restructuring pro-

gramme.

Th e restructuring of the Land Commission will be

made against the background of the Treatv of Rome

which aims to give people the right to work or set up

business in anv EEC countrv.

123