Francis FitzGibbon

Francis FitzGibbon is a KC. He was chair of the Criminal Bar Association from 2016 to 2017.

Short Cuts: Locking On

Francis FitzGibbon, 10 February 2022

The​ Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which has just gone through the House of Lords and will soon return to the Commons, is a miscellany. Not all of it is controversial, but it has two highly contentious elements: first, the government wants to add more weapons to the state’s formidable arsenal of measures to restrict public protest. The House of Lords has thrown out...

Short Cuts: Raab’s British Rights

Francis FitzGibbon, 7 October 2021

DominicRaab is the eighth lord chancellor and secretary of state for justice since the Conservative Party entered government in 2010. The average tenure has been nineteen months, with a corresponding churn of junior ministers and special advisers. Kenneth Clarke, the first in the post, lasted 28 months, just pipped by Chris Grayling, whose disastrous term was the longest at 32 months....

The Sovereign Weapon: The Old Bailey

Francis FitzGibbon, 5 March 2020

Thomas Grant’sCourt Number One tells the stories of 11 prominent trials heard in Court One of the Old Bailey between 1907, when it opened, and 2003. His aim is to use these stories as illustrations of ‘British sensibilities and preoccupations over the last hundred years … Through the criminal trials … there can be traced at least one version of the history of...

Short Cuts: The Court of Appeal

Francis FitzGibbon, 11 October 2018

If you want​ to appeal against a guilty verdict given by a crown court jury you first have to seek permission from the Court of Appeal. For permission to be granted, a judge has to be satisfied there is an ‘arguable case’ that the conviction was ‘unsafe’. If so, the appeal is heard in full by a panel of three judges. The latest figures show that in 2016-17 the court...

Short Cuts: Criminal Justice after Brexit

Francis FitzGibbon, 18 May 2017

After Brexit​, the public face of criminal justice will look much the same as it does now. The UK has resisted many of the European Union’s moves towards harmonisation of substantive criminal law and procedure, and it is unlikely to use its new-found freedom from the restraints of EU law to decriminalise things like child pornography, cybercrime and people trafficking. The EU’s...

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