Criminal

The Crown Court backlog reached a record 76,957 cases at the end of March, up 11% on the same period last year, according to the Ministry of Justice figures published this week

Daniel Khalife’s escape from HM Wandsworth strapped by a pair of trousers beneath the chassis of a delivery van grabbed public attention back in 2023. In this week’s NLJ, Sailesh Mehta and Theo Burges, Red Lion Chambers, examine how spies have previously been sentenced in the UK, the core principles involved, the increasingly close link between terrorism and espionage offences, and why they expect the number of prosecutions in this area to grow

Sailesh Mehta & Theo Burges consider the sentencing of Daniel Khalife & the growing intersection between terrorism & espionage offences

A statutory inquiry into grooming gangs, strengthened rape laws, and mandatory reporting will be introduced, the home secretary Yvette Cooper has said

The collapsing criminal justice system might return proportionality to health & safety enforcement decisions, argue Tom McNeill & Olivia Dwan

The Law Commission is seeking views on how to regulate alkaline hydrolysis, human composting and other funerary methods outside of burial, cremation or burial at sea

The assisted dying Bill leaves these terms open to interpretation, argue Edward Hodgson & Andrew Smith

In this week’s NLJ, David Walbank KC, Red Lion Chambers, discusses the potential for retrial in the case of Lucy Letby. Letby is back in the news amid doubts over the evidence used to convict the former Countess of Chester Hospital nurse. But, given the storm of media analysis, and the ‘deluge of analysis, comment and speculation that continues to engulf social media’, could a reassessment be carried out fairly?

The assisted dying bill, as currently drafted, risks criminalising compassionate actions and leaves too much to prosecutorial discretion, Edward Hodgson, associate, and Andrew Smith, partner, Corker Binning, argue in this week’s NLJ

Can a retrial be fair when a conviction has been at the centre of a media storm? David Walbank KC considers the Lucy Letby case