Whatever happened to the Cherie Booth sentencing case?
The Cherie Booth sentencing remarks had the makings of a great “Bad Law” news story.
These are stories which usually present a legal issue in a way which suggests the law is either being misused or misrepresented. Here, the potential greatness of the story lay in just how it confirmed various prejudices about her: that she would abuse her position as a judge to discriminate in favour of someone religious.
In February 2010 I looked here at the background to the story.
Instead of finding that she had abused her position, I was able to show – using publicly and easily available materials – that the sentence was within guidelines and was indeed perhaps at the harsher end of the applicable scale.
It was an exercise which took me a few minutes. It was astonishing that others didn’t do this, and chose the alternative of writing “venting” and “flaming” comments about Miss Booth.
But one doesn’t need a legal qualification to look at CPS guidance or the sentencing guidelines. One just needs a willingness to want to be better informed before forming a strong opinion.
There was perhaps a legitimate question as to why she made the comments on sentencing in the first place.
But many judges make trite admonishments when handing down sentence; anyone is free to go into a Crown Court or Magistrates’s Court and cringe at hearing them.
But on the far more serious allegation against a judge (even a part-time one), that of discrimination, there was simply no evidence of partial treatment.
And all this could be established in minutes.
However, the National Secular Society and others chose not to work it out for themselves and required the taxpayer to do it for them. So they complained to the Office for Judicial Complaints.
And unsurprisingly, some five months later, the OJC has found that there is no evidence of improper conduct.
I am myself a secularist, and I am hostile to New Labour; but neither of these things should mean that one should fall for a “Bad Law” story, still less become outraged and demand regulatory intervention.
When presented with any “Bad Law” story, the first step is straightforward: look at the relevant available materials.
If it appears there is a misuse of law rather than a misrepresentation, then that is the moment to complain or to campaign.
David Allen Green writes the Jack of Kent blog , which was shortlisted for the 2010 George Orwell Prize. He is a solicitor at City law firm Preiskel & Co LLP.
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Readers' comments (11)
MikeHypercube | 10-Jun-2010 4:18 pm
It seems there are two distinct issues in play here:
1. Whether the sentence itself was affected on religious grounds as suggested by the NSS
2. Whether it was appropriate for Ms Booth to "take into account" the fact of the defendant's religion at all
On (1) your earlier piece seems clear enough that it was not, and this is still the point seemingly questioned by the NSS. On (2) there are surely still questions to answer?
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BobFowler | 10-Jun-2010 5:06 pm
The sentence was within the guidelines, but isn't the question whether Ms Booth would have given a non-religious person a harsher sentence (but still within the guidelines)?
It would help if the OJC gave an explanation for their conclusion- does the fact that the sentence was within the guidelines mean her decision making process is irrelevant, or as you suggest were they merely an admonishment?
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dreamstretch | 10-Jun-2010 5:23 pm
What she said was "I am going to suspend this sentence for the period of two years based on the fact you are a religious person and have not been in trouble before."
If his religion didn't affect the sentence then she was lying.
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Stephen | 11-Jun-2010 0:13 am
Well, it's not a particularly unusual offence so what you'd do is look at a large group of people who plead guilty to ABH, split them into non-religious and religious groups, then work out if they receive harsher or lesser sentences and then work out if Cherie Blair is giving the people in the non-religious group that she sentences statistically significantly longer sentences.
It's a completely reasonable hypothesis and it can totally be verified by looking at the evidence but just sitting and saying "ah, but you don't know if she'd be worse to another person, do you?" puts a very murky spin on it.
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David Godsmark | 11-Jun-2010 10:14 am
She also said ".....and have not been in trouble before" - I feel that the NSS complaint is putting too fine a point on her words. To my mind, she was primarily acknowledging the defendants previously blameless character and also, subtly reminding the defendant that he ought to adhere to the code of good conduct implied in his declared beliefs. It was not an issue for me, but I understand that the NSS is 'duty bound' to 'sniff out' any possible misuse of power in regard to religious belief.
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Craig L | 11-Jun-2010 11:02 am
If taking or stating that you are taking into account the defendant's religion in sentencing isn't judicial misconduct then perhaps the definition of judicial misconduct should be changed.
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Steve Jones | 11-Jun-2010 11:46 am
This whole thing misses the point. Nobody is suggested that the sentence wasn't within the guidelines, or that the sentence wasn't appropriate.
The issue under question was whether (as Cherry Booth's wording seemed to explicitly state) that the sentence was made more lenient than it would otherwise have been because of the defendent's religious leanings.
If the argument which appears to be being made here is that the only criterion which needs to be met is that the sentence falls within the range prescribed in the sentencing guidelines, then that's not a very high standard to be used. If this line is followed, and (as is implied here) the religious leanings of a defendent can be taken into account in sentencing, then I would argue the sentencing guidelines are wrong. They should explicitly (in my view) state that it should not be.
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Neil Howlett | 11-Jun-2010 5:46 pm
I think the other point is that as the offender has reportedly come directly from prayer as his mosque before committing the offense his faith didn't seem to be very effective at preventing him from assaulting people, so the remark was incompetent.
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John | 14-Jun-2010 4:59 pm
This case is very worrying. Would the violent criminal have got even softer treatment if he had been a Roman Catholic (Mrs Blair's religion, apart from money grubbing)?
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Hear, hear | 18-Jun-2010 11:56 am
I wholeheartedly agree with Craig L and Steve Jones.
Someone's spirtual beliefs (or lack of them) should not affect criminal sentencing. What ever happened to all men are equal before the law??
Ms Booth's actions, whose reasoning and motivation is made clear by her statements, DO amount to misconduct.
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