Legal Aid Ils 210 by Robert Egerton

Author:Robert Egerton [Egerton, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781136267727
Google: Jf0g3NOH04cC
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-06-19T05:48:01+00:00

Chapter X

Legal Aid in All Courts

The survey of our own and foreign systems has shown that four things have commonly been considered necessary to enable a poor person to conduct legal proceedings—exemption from court fees, exemption from giving security for costs, representation, and assistance with out-of-pocket expenses. Apart from the last the Poor Persons' Procedure covers all these points but this procedure applies only to the High Court and Court of Appeal, while there are different provisions for the House of Lords and for criminal cases.

The Acts relating to poor prisoners have already been described. In some respects they are superior to the rules for civil cases but they have frequently been criticized, so far as their operation in practice is concerned, on two grounds, first that the remuneration of solicitors and counsel is inadequate for a complicated case, secondly that legal aid is too seldom granted by magistrates.

Some of the severest criticisms are to be found in English Justice by "Solicitor", where a description is given of the conduct of a criminal defence in a case where there is money and in one where there is not.1 The solution proposed—and this was advanced in a Bill introduced as long ago as 1902—is that the costs of the defence should be paid by the State on the same scale as those of the prosecution. Certainly when one considers the principles of our criminal law that a man is innocent until he is proved guilty, and that it is better than ninety-nine guilty men should go free than that one innocent man should be convicted, it is surprising that the unlimited resources of the State should be brought to the assistance of the prosecution while the defence is stinted.

The reluctance of magistrates to grant legal aid is indisputable having regard to the fact that only 327 legal aid certificates were granted for all the cases tried by magistrates in 1938.2 Many Police Court cases are, of course, trivial, but many are not. In the year 1938, 19,079 people were sent to prison by these courts without the option of a fine 1 and, as the Finlay Committee pointed out,2 the consequences of a conviction, particularly of first offenders, may be extremely serious. "Solicitor", whose experience of Police Courts is obviously extensive, states that miscarriages of justice undoubtedly arise and that legal aid is doubly necessary owing to the fact that magistrates are often untrained, while the speed with which cases are heard in the police court and the tendencies in some courts to rush the prisoner into summary trial and to refuse bail, add to the prisoner's difficulties.3

In America the Public Defender, or, as he is called when not employed by the State, Private Defender, is popular with the Legal Aid Associations. It is said that assigned counsel are liable to be young and inexperienced or else older men who are not able to get work through the usual channels and that the Defender system makes for efficiency and responsibility, and is probably twice as cheap.

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