Under what statute can an English judge &#39;sentence&#39; someone to read classic literature? This story in the Guardian claims that a judge has imposed a suspended sentence on someone convicted of terrorism offences and has also insisted that he read classic literature by Dickens, Austen, Shakespeare and Hardy. I assumed that, under English law, sentences for criminal convictions were tightly specified and not open to imposing such unusual/flexible punishments. Under what statutes or sentencing guidelines can a non-standard requirement like this be imposed? UPDATE The case has been referred to the Attorney General for review (on the grounds of undue lieniency) so we might get more details about this.
Section 277 of the Sentencing Act 2020 provides: 277 Suspended sentence order for person aged 21 or over: availability (1) This section applies where, in dealing with an offender for an offence, a court passes a sentence of imprisonment. (2) A suspended sentence order (see section 286) is available in relation to that sentence if the term of the sentence of imprisonment is (a) at least 14 days, but (b) not more than 2 years. Chapter 5 of Part 10 of the Act contains provisions relating to suspended sentence orders (SSOs). The following are applicable: 286 (2) A suspended sentence order may also specify one or more available community requirements with which the offender must comply during the supervision period. 286 (4) The community requirements are listed in column 1 of the community requirements table (see section 287). 286 (5) Provision about each requirement is made by the provisions of Schedule 9 mentioned in the corresponding entry in column 2 of that table. The community requirements table in section 287 contains the following community requirements which may be imposed as part of a SSO: Unpaid work requirement Rehabilitation activity requirement Programme requirement Prohibited activity requirement Curfew requirement Exclusion requirement Residence requirement Foreign travel prohibition requirement Mental health treatment requirement Drug rehabilitation requirement Alcohol treatment requirement Alcohol abstinence and monitoring requirement Attendance centre requirement Electronic compliance monitoring requirement Electronic whereabouts monitoring requirement Each of these are described in detail in Schedule 9. I wasn't able to find the sentencing judgment for this particular case, but my guess would be that the judge imposed either an unpaid work requierment or a rehabilitation activity requirement (the 1st and 2nd on the list). None of the others appear to be applicable. Part 1 of Schedule 9: 1(1) In this Code “unpaid work requirement”, in relation to a relevant order, means a requirement that the offender must perform unpaid work in accordance with the instructions of the responsible officer as to (a) the work to be performed, and (b) the times, during a period of 12 months, at which the offender is to perform it. Part 2 of Schedule 9: 4(1) In this Code “rehabilitation activity requirement”, in relation to a relevant order, means a requirement that, during the relevant period, the offender must comply with any instructions given by the responsible officer to do either or both of the following (a) attend appointments; (b) participate in activities. 5(4) The responsible officer, when instructing the offender to participate in activities, may require the offender (a) to participate in specified activities and, while doing so, comply with instructions given by the person in charge of the activities, or (b) to go to a specified place and, while there, comply with any instructions given by the person in charge of the place.
It depends on the particular law in the particular jurisdiction in which you are charged. Most statute laws enumerate the defences that are available. In common law countries there is a general defence that (except in strict liability offences) the perpetrator must well ... perpetrate the criminal act; what you describe does not appear to meet that requirement. Other jurisdictions would not be so forgiving.
If you're in the USA, this almost certainly falls under fair use, or if you are in another jurisdiction, it almost certainly falls under an analogous exception for educational use. The fact that the excerpt is short contributes to this conclusion. You can also avoid having to rely even on these exceptions by choosing sources that are in the public domain. The specific date before which a work is guaranteed to be in the public domain depends, again, on your jurisdiction, but it's probably sometime in the early 20th century. For example, you're certainly on solid ground if you use Dickens.
The power definitely exists, and it is also said by some (respectable persons) that they have a duty to do so. There are many schools of legal interpretation. One trend is to attempt to discern legislative intent, based on whatever facts there might be such as newspaper articles or legislative committee reports. A contrary trend is to look exclusively at the text enacted by the legislature – this school is known as the Textualist school, and is currently dominant in the US Supreme Court. There are also non-textualist &quot;progressive&quot; trends that seek justice according to some social principle, rather than the text of the law or the definitive intent of the original legislators, which may address the situation that you have in mind. In civil cases, statutory law tends to be rather unclear, allowing a judge to decide on the basis of their beliefs of what is fair, equitable or just. That is because in the common law, close to a millenium old, judgments were supposed to be &quot;just&quot;. In the US, much of the common law has been re-coded as statutory law, and in that case, the intent of the legislature is really to &quot;encode the sense of justice implicit in the common law&quot;. This does not mean that trial judges have unlimited power to set aside the words of existing laws. Their primary obligation is to apply the law literally, as interpreted by their superiors (appellate courts). When the higher courts are silent and when the legislature is not clear, the trial judge has some leeway to follow whichever jurisprudential philosophy they adhere to.
Probably not. I can't find the new text, but the existing law was probably just amended with a new category: &quot;hate speech&quot; based on race, religion, disability and &quot;homosexual leanings, lifestyle, or orientation&quot; was illegal – this new law seems to just tweak the categories. The Supreme Court has addressed the general law here in a race-based case, stating that expression of contempt is crucial to defining the crime (&quot;to threaten or insult, or promote hatred, persecution or contempt&quot; based on a protected category). The line that would be drawn is between reading the text, versus promoting hatred or contempt using the text as justification. You can't be prosecuted for hate speech in Norway by reporting the existence of racial etc. discrimination.
Any written communication is generally admissible Subject to all the normal rules for admissibility of course. For texts between you and a third party the major issue that springs to mind is relevance. As in, how are they relevant to the dispute between you and this man? If they are not, your lawyer should have objected to them on this basis, however, its too late now. I'm curious as to how he obtained these and whether it was done legally or not. Illegality will not affect their admissibility as the exclusionary rule doesn't apply to civil matters, however, it does speak to the gentleman's character.
This would establish a new precedent (I assume) You assume correctly. However, a precedent is only binding on lower courts and persuasive on courts at the same level so a trial judge precedent is not very far-reaching. Does this statute takes precedence over (overrules) the previous court precedent? Not exactly. The precedent was good for the old (common) law. Now the law has changed and the old precedent is irrelevant. Courts only interpret the law and legislatures are free to change the law within the limits of their constitutional power. Indeed, a fair number of laws are enacted because the legislature does not agree with how courts are ruling.
First, while Law and Order should not be taken as an accurate depiction of a New York trial, it especially should not be taken as an accurate depiction of an Australian trial. Australian law, while it has some major similarities with US law (both ultimately derive from the law of England), is not US law. With procedural matters (such as "may jurors ask questions of witnesses"), it can potentially differ from court to court. In general, jurors may not simply ask a witness a question. The jury's job is not to investigate and figure out if the defendant was guilty or not; it's to evaluate the cases presented by each side. US (and Australian, as far as I know) courts use what's known as the adversarial model, where the prosecution and the defense both present the best cases they can and a neutral third party decides which case was stronger. In a US criminal trial, the state is expected to justify why someone should be in jail; the jury shouldn't be helping them justify it. This isn't how all jurisdictions around the world work, but it's how the US does. One concern with juror questions is that it has the risk that the juror will not be impartial. Jurors are not supposed to get into arguments with witnesses, or to go after them to try to prove a point. In your case, the juror might be introducing an entirely different line of reasoning from the one either side is presenting, and that's simply not their job. People have raised the concern that a juror thinking up questions might be deciding the case before they hear all the evidence, and might give too much weight to the answers to their own questions (or read a lot into it if a question is denied). There are also rules on what questions may be legally asked; lawyers know these and jurors generally don't, which is why jurors may almost never directly ask a question to a witness. Where they can ask questions, it's virtually always written questions, which the judge reviews, gives to both sides to see if anyone objects, and then reads to the witness in a neutral tone.