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Comment by denton-scratch | Hacker News Reader

> or they're just as good as any other lawyer

My experience is that some advocates are much better than most advocates. The best lawyer I've had was a trainee barrister, standing in for a run-of-the-mill high-street solicitor, who couldn't show up. Presumably because she was a trainee, she did a really meticulous job for me, on what was a trivial offence: speeding. Few lawyers would put much effort into a speeding ticket.

She got me off; I was speeding, but I had been charged under the wrong section of the Road Traffic Act. "I humbly submit, your honour, that it would be quite wrong, your honour, for my client to be convicted of an offence he didn't commit, your honour".

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Isn’t this a great example of what the OP was talking about? You did not get off because of absolute innocence, but “technical minutiae as if they are source code”.

But it does answer the OPs question, some are better at navigating it.

I don't think it's "technical minutiae"; I was charged with an offence that I didn't commit. My advocate just took the trouble to read the Act that I was charged under. Given that the court knew I hadn't committed the offence I was charged with, it would certainly have been a miscarriage of justice to go on and convict me anyway, and I could have got it overturned on appeal.

Oh I agree, but the law was confusing enough that an official bungled the charges.

This is way more common than people realize, and one of the reasons courts accept "no contest" and pleas so often, especially in things like traffic laws.

You said you were speeding, right? But somehow the judge can't just say "ah right, looks like it's the wrong traffic statute that's been filed. Here's a fine for whatever it was that you actually did, you can just settle it here or we do a proper trial if you disagree".

I mean of course we don't want people to be convicted of things they didn't do, but how is it ok for someone to get away with something they did do, just because some bureaucrat picked the wrong law?

> somehow the judge can't just say "ah right, looks like it's the wrong traffic statute that's been filed. Here's a fine for whatever it was that you actually did

We shatter the powers to bring and adjudicate charges. This creates inefficiencies, like this. But it also brings stability. (More practically, the judge may not have all the facts and circumstances relevant for citing the person.)

Due to historical procedural abuses, modern societies insist that due process is as high a bar to prosecution as guilt of the offense for which a defendant is charged. The courts don’t want to be used as a forum for detective work, either. They just want to hear the case as presented, issue a judgment, and move on to the next case.

I don't think judges should be able to go off-piste like that. In this country, charges are laid by the CPS, and adjudicated by courts, and not vice-versa. In the US, I believe (based on TV courtroom dramas!) that judges have more latitude.

In fact my "judge" was a panel of lay magistrates. They must consult the Clerk of the Court (a trained lawyer) if they have any doubt about their decisions.

I like this system; I'm not keen on the idea of a judge being able to change the charges on me at trial. I think the prosecution were given the opportunity to go away and get the charge altered; but they gave up (it was 30 years ago, memory falters).

Look, I deserved to be penalised; I would have simply put my hands up, but I had to go to court to make a mitigation plea, because I risked losing my licence.

My point was just that a really good advocate is head-and-shoulders above the crowd.

Prosecutors make this kind of mistake on a routine basis.

Where you charged for speeding afterwards?

No, she got me off. I was acquitted.

The copper that was standing duty as the prosecutor wasn't briefed. He had an afternoon's-worth of cases to present, and he wasn't qualified to argue a case. And either I couldn't be re-charged because double-jeopardy, or it just wasn't worth the effort.

Just as icing on the cake, my advocate was a stunningly beautiful redhead.

> Just as icing on the cake, my advocate was a stunningly beautiful redhead.

relevance?

Not saying that mentioning it that way is relevant here, but I'd wager that being good looking is an asset for a lawyer in court.

Only that I had a lucky day in more ways than one.

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