Avizandum

Hidden away on BBC iplayer documentaries I found more from the world of the cameras in Scottish Courts.  In Appeal Court: The End of the Line some of Britain's most boring Judges attempt to decide if murderers who obviously did it did it.  They did.  They then considered whether designer drug dealers were drug dealers.  They were.  And whether someone's sentence for something should be reduced slightly.  It was.  Or that's how I remember it. Oh well I don't suppose we can have the Guilford Four or the Birmingham Six every week...

We're supposed to learn someonething from these voyeuristic exercises in Judicial tittle tattle but I fear that all I left with was a view of m'learned friends as smug and pompous.  Mind you it wasn't totally without entertainment value.  Perhaps there's a new form of detective drama here.  Instead of the Whodunnit? the Howdeliberatelydidtheydoit? for that seems to be the crux of the issue in most of these cases.  Hardly anyone is a victim of a miscarriage of justice.  More often than not a miscarriage of sentencing.  Even when judgements are overturned it usually only results in a retrial rather than the wrongly convicted bursting from the courtroom to a blaze of camera flashes.  Or at least that's what the narrator tells us..

One thing's for certian - all the Judges eat well.  Not that there aren't probably thin Judges somewhere but these three near Dickensian caricatures look like they enjoy a port and a pie...

And what is my considered view of the value of this program...?

Avizandum