Courts’ Return Brings Powdered Wigs, Goggles and Face Masks
Courts’ Return Brings Powdered Wigs, Goggles and Face Masks
(Bloomberg) -- The courtrooms of London’s Old Bailey still acknowledge the traditions of its near 350-year history, with judges and attorneys wearing robes and powdered horse-hair wigs.
This week -- as criminal trials reopened after a two-month hiatus -- face masks, gloves, and social distancing have joined the requirements of a well-dressed officer of the court in the time of coronavirus.
The first trials, which were postponed in March due to Covid-19, resumed Wednesday at London’s central criminal court. Security staff, dressed in masks and gloves, enforced social distancing and made visitors apply hand sanitizer.
Jurors were spread out across five benches to ensure a healthy distance between seats. Three courtrooms were used for each trial and lawyers prepared to make their closing arguments from the witness box.
Just two trials began -- a Serious Fraud Office case against three men accused of making corrupt payments to secure multi-million dollar business contracts in Iraq between 2005 and 2011, and a trial of six teenagers accused in a fatal stabbing of a 17-year-old student. Both prosecutions were brought to a halt by the virus nearly two months ago, but the juries were kept sworn in.
As the U.K. plans to resume other trials as soon as next week, this week’s proceedings will provide a model for how trials will be run during, and in the aftermath of, the coronavirus pandemic. Similar measures are being seen across Europe.
In a long-awaited ruling on the European Central Bank’s quantitative easing program by Germany’s constitutional court last week, people wore masks and only five judges, instead of the usual eight, attended in order to maintain distance between them on the bench.
Seating Map
The week before the SFO trial restarted, Judge Martin Beddoe sketched a map of how the courtroom should look. Senior lawyers sat in the jury box, while jurors were where attorneys would usually sit. Junior counsel and instructing solicitors sat where the press and family members of defendants would usually sit, while press stationed themselves in the public gallery box.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing. There was a 30-minute delay as security staff worked out where people should sit. Several court staff and lawyers wore face masks, with one lawyer also sporting plastic goggles. The judge had hand sanitizer and gloves on his bench.
When jurors entered the courtroom one-by-one and without wearing protective equipment, the judge asked if the court arrangements and their journey on public transport was satisfactory. No one raised an objection.
Cleaned Screens
“Let me know if that gets uncomfortable,” he said, adding that jurors should ask him if they want access to protective gear and hand sanitizer. The court is operating with shorter hours than usual to avoid jurors traveling in rush hour, and Ipads displaying evidence had been cleaned and wiped, he said.
“I have complete confidence in your continuing ability to this case,” he told the jury. “Your commitment to this case so far has really been quite exceptional.”
It was a very different picture than the pre-outbreak court scene. On the first day of the SFO trial in January, dozens of lawyers, journalists and members of the public packed into a small courtroom at Southwark Crown Court on the other side of the River Thames. People squished together, with hardly a centimeter between them, let alone the two meters required now.
The trial was moved to one of the biggest courts at the Old Bailey to accommodate social distancing. Jurors have been given an entire court to deliberate in, rather than a small room that’s normally used. A third court, connected to an audio feed of the proceedings, is being used as an overspill room for press and the public.
Only one defendant, Paul Bond, attended Wednesday. The others, Stephen Whiteley and Ziad Akle, listened to the case remotely via an audio feed because of health related reasons, the judge said. At least two attorneys and other legal representatives listened via a remote audio feed, he said.
The accusations against the three men come out of an SFO corruption investigation at Unaoil that began in 2016. All three men deny the charges. Evidence in the case was presented before the postponement and the trial continues with closing arguments, which is expected to last a further two weeks.
Other U.K. jury trials will resume as soon as May 18, it was announced this week after Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the country would take tentative steps to get back to work.
At first, a limited number of trials will take place at courts including the Old Bailey and at Cardiff Crown Court. That should help the authorities understand how it might be possible to conduct trials more widely, Lord Chancellor Robert Buckland said in a statement.
“It is important that the administration of justice continues to function whenever it is possible in an environment which is consistent with the safety of all those involved,” the Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett said Monday.
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