03 July 2008
In brief
Bar Council chair Tim Dutton QC has mounted a scathing attack on the BBC over its drama series Criminal Justice, which follows the story of a 21-year old man who has a drunken one-nightstand only to find his lover stabbed to death on the pillow next to him in the morning. The second episode shows a QC encouraging a client to provide a false defence to the court which, Dutton asserts, would have had the barrister struck off for breach of professional conduct in real life. “Naturally some licence needs to be taken for dramatic purposes. But Criminal Justice goes too far,” he says. Peter Moffat, the writer of the series, is a former barrister.
