Matthew Heath is the man behind Grift Watch. He is known as Legal Gengar. His trial for the harassment of Stephanie Hayden has been adjourned until 19 October. It was due to happen today. The date for today’s trial was set back in February.
Unfortunately the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) seems unable to manage even bog-standard levels of competence, failing to disclose relevant material to the defence team, failing to respond to a Bad Character Application on Hayden (which Heath’s legal team had put together), failing to respond to a request for a case management hearing and failing to respond to a defence statement requesting a case review, which was made in February. For today’s trial, the CPS handed the case to an agent who, at the time the hearing started, didn’t appear to have seen any of the defence documents.
What follows is little more than a farce, but it’s important to remember Heath has been facing a criminal charge since the beginning of this year and it will now continue to hang over him, through no fault of his own, over the summer and into autumn. The psychological stress should not be underestimated.
Agent of the Crown
The Crown’s agent, Shazia Pervez, had the job of defending the indefensible. The first thing she did was ask the court for twenty minutes to get her head round the documents. The judge wondered what Natasha Hausdorff, Heath’s barrister, had to say about that. Hausdorff listed the CPS’ failures to date and reminded the court she had submitted a skeleton argument more than a week ago seeking permission to have the trial stayed. In criminal justice terms (unlike the civil courts) a stay means dropping the proceedings for good. The CPS had not responded to this, either.
The judge told Pervez to get the CPS Reviewing Lawyer on the phone and explain to her the reasons for the CPS’s failures to follow the basic compulsory pre-trial procedures. Pervez beetled off and returned with her notes of the conversation. Apparently the overarching reason the CPS could not do its job properly was due to “resourcing”.
The Reviewing Lawyer agreed the CPS had not given any disclosure to the defendant, but did not offer an explanation. The RL claimed a February case review was carried out, and the CPS decided to proceed with the prosecution, but didn’t bother informing the defence team of the fact of the review, its reasoning nor its result. The CPS also had not offered a response to the Bad Character Application, but that was because it was accepting it wholesale. But that again had not been communicated to the defendant’s legal team.
“In Training“
District Judge Sher was not impressed, calling the CPS response “not acceptable at all – they need to provide precise answers to what’s happened and why they haven’t responded”.
As for the application to stay the proceedings, Pervez said “The Reviewing Lawyer just instructed me to oppose the application – we didn’t discuss it.”
The Judge sent Pervez away to have another conversation with the Reviewing Lawyer, seeking a proper explanation for the failings.
Pervez returned to tell the judge that the Reviewing Lawyer was not answering her phone because she was “in training”, but she had emailed her something over.
The RL told the judge via Pervez via email that the trial could still go ahead. She had the initial disclosure and could email it over immediately – the case review request was largely irrelevant because it was about the Article 10 right to freedom of expression which had nothing to do with the case and the requests for disclosure of various police notebooks, call-logs and bodycam interactions with the Complainant were a “fishing expedition”.
Entirely Unsatisfactory Scandalous Shambles
When the judge asked if the case review request had been seen by the Officer in Charge (OIC) of the case, it transpired another, or possibly the original case review request had been sent to the OIC for his input on 9 June (ie last Tuesday). Sadly the OIC was on holiday, and remained on holiday today, despite the Defence making it clear to the CPS he was required as a witness. For whatever reason the CPS had not informed the officer he was “warned” (a formal legal term) that he would be required to give evidence.
The judge called it “entirely unsatisfactory”, Pervez called it a “shambles” and Natash Hausdorff suggested it was “scandalous”. Hausdorff was particularly energised by the RL’s dismissal of the February defence statement being mainly about Freedom of Expression and the request for disclosure as a “fishing expedition”. Hausdorff said this “characterised the Crown’s attitude” to this case, before going on to remind the judge that Team Heath had been exemplary in meeting their deadlines, requesting information and generally going about the pre-trial stuff in a way you would expect from competent professionals.
The judge refused the application to stay the trial. After hearing an application for adjournment (from Pervez – who managed to make a decent fist of things despite being metaphorically blindfolded with both hands tied behind her back) and the application for the stay from Hausdorff, she decided to allow the adjournment and fixed a 1.5 day trial starting 19 October.
They/Them
For some reason the judge was very keen to discuss and settle on pronouns. All were agreed (with referral to the agreement reached between the CPS, court and legal team for Graham Linehan in September last year) that the complainant’s and defence’s legal teams could use the pronouns they wanted – so Hayden will be referred to by the CPS as she/her, and referred to by the defence team as he/him. “I won’t use pronouns” said the judge, hoping she would be able to use “the Complainant” as much as possible. “But if it can’t be avoided I will use they/them so the court is as neutral as possible.”
At the end of the hearing the judge ordered Heath to stand up. He’d been sitting in the well of the court with the permission of the judge as he has “autism which affects his hearing”. The judge apologised for the “inability of the trial to progress today” and told him to stick to his bail conditions and ensure he turned up on 19 October or there would be a warrant for his arrest. She quickly added she was “sure” he would do, as he had attended today, but she just wanted to make him aware of the consequences.
Hayden left the court at lunchtime as by that stage it was obvious he was not going to be needed as a witness because the trial would either be adjourned or stayed. At 2.12pm he tweeted “Looking forward to a wonderful, reflective, adventurous, and above all peaceful summer”.
Matthew Heath has to spend the next four months with a criminal charge hanging over him.
I’ve asked the CPS for a statement about events leading up to today and will update this post if I receive one.
Full live tweets from the day in court, beautifully formatted on this website. Please donate if you can.
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