The Right to Access to a Lawyer at Police Stations: Making the European Union Directive Work in Practice
Recent EU Directives provide for a range of procedural protections for suspects and accused persons, going beyond the more broadly articulated standards set out in the European Convention of Human Rights. These reforms are to be welcomed, but their implementation poses a range of challenges for Member States. Drawing on recent empirical research, this article focuses on one measure, the right to legal assistance during police custody. It discusses the range of complex and often inter-related factors that operate to help or to hinder the process of ensuring that the right is ‘practical and effective’ and not merely ‘theoretical and illusory’. Member States do not share a common procedural tradition and alongside ensuring sufficient financial and human resources, effective implementation will require shifts in the legal and occupational cultures of police, prosecutors and the criminal bar.
Constructing the Pre-Trial Role of the Defence in French Criminal Procedure: An Adversarial Outsider in an Inquisitorial Process?
This article outlines the construction of the role of the defence lawyer in French pre-trial criminal procedure and the factors which have both influenced and constrained its recent evolution. Beginning with an examination of the changing ways in which the pre-trial defence role is characterised by the text of the law and the official discourse surrounding it, the article then provides an empirically based account of the ways in which the defence avocat is perceived and accommodated by the key legal actors, namely the police and the judicial officers charged with the supervision of criminal investigations. A careful unpicking of the nature of their resistance to any effective defence role reveals fundamental weaknesses in the functioning of the current inquisitorial structure and, paradoxically, suggests that there is more rather than less room for the defence to play a role within French pre-trial criminal procedure.
Standing Accused: The Organization and Practices of Criminal Defence Lawyers in Britain
Defence solicitors in criminal cases - an introduction organization and characteristics of criminal firms the culture of criminal defence pre-interrogation advice advisors at interrogation at the office - getting the client's story the solicitor at court - client management and bail hearings the solicitor at court - plea and mitigation contested trials in Magistrates' Courts solicitors, barristers and the Crown Court. Appendix: growth in criminal legal representation and legal aid in Magistrates' Courts, 1964-1990.