A senior judge has threatened to lock up defendants for “obstructing justice” if they wait to plead guilty until the start of their trial and leave valuable courtrooms sitting empty, it has emerged.
Judge Robert Linford, the Honourary Recorder of Truro, issued the extraordinary warning in a message to senior barristers, complaining that his courts were being left unused when trials are cancelled at the last minute.
He said defendants “forfeit their right to bail” by entering late guilty pleas, they are “guilty of obstructing the course of justice”, and he warned that only “utterly exceptional circumstances” would stop him sending them to prison to wait for their sentencing hearing.
The leaked memo, published on social media by legal advice service CrimeLine, drew immediate criticism from barristers and legal commentators suggesting he is pursuing an “unlawful policy”.
Last year, the Senior Presiding Judge of England and Wales Lord Justice Edis led calls for a concerted effort within the legal community for guilty pleas to be brought forward in time - if they are likely to be entered eventually – to avoid wasting court time.
Judge Linford, who is the resident senior judge for Plymouth and Truro crown courts, said in his memo that the issue of aborted trials had been raised in a users group meeting in Plymouth and he had experienced the same problem while sitting recently in Truro.
“There were 12 cases in the lists for trial in the last 2 weeks. ALL of them pleaded either the week before the trial or on the day”, he wrote.
“The result has been that both courts are not being used at all in the afternoons and for most of the mornings. We cannot currently get any judge for the week after next and so it looks like Truro Crown Court will close entirely for that week – Truro has become at the very bottom of the pecking order for judge cover in large part because we are not employing the judges that we have.
“I am at a total loss to know how to deal with this.
“It is certainly not a case of defendants attending and finding witnesses have shown up and so have pleaded. There are other causes.
“In a final effort to stop this I am telling everyone that ANY defendant attending for trial in front of me at Truro or Plymouth who pleads guilty will (if there is an application for a report or other adjournment for sentence), save in utterly exceptional circumstances, be remanded in custody pending sentence.
“In my view they forfeit their right to bail as they are guilty of obstructing the course of justice. Pleading guilty late is delaying justice and thereby obstructing it.”
He added a request for his message to be passed on to all barristers working in the area on criminal cases, so that defendants “can be advised accordingly”.
“Trial day must mean what it says”, he wrote.
“There will be a trial not a plea which could/should have been entered months (or years) ago.”
When contacted by the Evening Standard, the Judicial Office declined to comment on Judge Linford’s email.
Defendants are given increased credit – reduced sentences – for pleading guilty to their crimes earlier rather than later. On the day of trial, only 10 per cent credit is usually given, compared with 33 per cent for a guilty plea at the start of the legal process.
Ministry of Justice (MoJ) records show 1,853 Crown Court trials in the first three months of 2023 were “cracked” – did not go ahead – after a late guilty plea was entered by the defendant.
The Crown Courts of England and Wales currently has a backog of more than 63,000 cases, and the MoJ announced on Friday that there would be unlimited judicial sitting days for the third year in a row.
However, there has been a lack of available judges to sit on cases, which has hampered efforts to bring down the backlog, and “cracked” trials leave judges who are available with no cases to oversee.
Barrister Josh Hitchens, in response to Judge Linford’s memo, wrote online: “This is unlawful and next person remanded should judicially review what is, almost certainly, an unlawful policy.”
In his comments last year, Lord Justice Edis suggested “dialogue between solicitors, barristers, list officers and resident judges, so you can identify cases of yours where they will plead guilty.
“Where you think, if it was listed, it would probably plead, talk to the list officer and they should be saying ‘OK we will list it’.
“This is a way of processing cases. I’m not saying more cases ought to crack than they would today. Those which are going to crack anyway and should crack – let’s get cracking.”
