Show fudged legal issues

Press, 26 July 1989, Page 15

Show fudged legal issues

A.K. Grant

on television

"Blind Justice,” a drama series about London barristers, currently screening on One on Saturday nights, is magnificent but, alas, not flawless. Last Saturday’s episode fudged, or confused, or at any rate made no clearer, the issues involved in a barrister’s defending a person whom he or she may think guilty. Katherine Hughes, played by Jane Lapotaire, was shown refusing to take a case involving the defence of consent to a charge of rape, and subsequently a case involving the defence of a repellent young neoNazi.

Various arguments were advanced as to why she should do these cases, and she eventually did do the rape one. But the arguments were muddled. The hoary old chestnut about barristers being like taxis on the rank, obliged

to take any passenger, was trotted out. It was suggested that she should not discriminate between cases because this might be bad for the reputation of herself and her chambers, or that it might be

O.K. to discriminate if the matter didn’t get into the papers.

The point was never made clearly that a barrister who refuses to take certain types of case because he or she thinks the person charged with them is probably guilty has abandoned the basic justification for what it is barristers do. They, unlike architects or doctors, are involved in a system which determines, or does its best to determine, guilt or innocence. And they have to be the one part of the system whose opinions about guilt or innocence are completely irrelevant. Their duty is to do the best they can for their client and keep their opinions to themselves, provided they don’t knowingly mislead the court. That, at any rate, is the situation in societies which believe that people ought to be allowed to

defend themselves with professional assistance: obviously things are simpler in a place like China, where they simply blow the back of your head off without the wastage of time and public money involved in trying you fairly.

So a barrister who refuses to defend certain classes of accused isn’t really a fit person to defend anybody. I realise that I am addressing myself to the general readership of “The Press” and not a Law Society seminar, but there has been confusion about these matters in the public mind for several hundred years, and it is a pity to find a programme as good as “Blind Justice” addressing but failing to clarify the matter.

These reservations aside, the programme is superb. The first episode, last Saturday week, con-

veyed very well the sheer exhaustion involved in hacking your way around the criminal courts, trying to keep out of prison people whom everybody else thinks ought to be there. The gossip and jargon and jokes and jealousies of the legal life are pungently presented. That fine actor, Jack Shepherd, is excellent as Frank Cartwright, the Left-wing head of chambers, even if he does look disconcertingly like Hawkeye Pierce from “M*A*S*H.”

Jane Lapotaire is outstandingly good as Katherine Hughes. It is good to see a tough, cynical role being written for an Englishwoman instead of an L. A. private eye or a Miami Cop. Ms Lapotaire’s previous great triumph was as Piaf in the play of the same name about the French singer of the same name,

and it would be entirely appropriate to the character of Katherine for Ms Lapotaire to burst into a full-throated rendition of “Non, Je Regrette Rien.” Katherine’s habit of keeping toy-boys around the flat might raise eyebrows in some legal circles, but, as we say in the law Res ipsa loquitur (Jealousy will get you nowhere).