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A major Evening Standard and ITV News investigation has found grieving families, pensioners with dementia, and even dead people have been wrongly prosecuted in Britain’s secretive fast-track courts.
The Standard’s courts correspondent Tristan Kirk reports that analysis by a panel of barristers of a sample of prosecutions in the controversial Single Justice Procedure concluded three quarters of those cases should never have got to court - there was no public interest.
But instead, they were dealt with by a magistrate in private based on written evidence.
Cases were brought against vulnerable defendants who included a mother mourning the death of her three-month-old baby daughter.
Tristan Kirk discusses the latest evidence his ongoing investigation has uncovered, why this secretive process is still happening and the calls for reform.
In part two, more on plans to pedestrianise Oxford Street as it’s emerged cyclists will be banned from riding through the West End thoroughfare’s vehicle-free section under Sadiq Khan’s planned traffic ban.
Evening Standard transport editor Ross Lydall discusses the proposals, plus concerns about closure of a cycling and walking route near the Olympic Park that’s being closed for 18 months due to Thames Water works.
