QUESTIONS ABOUT THE LAW – PART ONE

      PhotoEdit/Alamy Stock Photo

       1. Can the Queen be charged with a crime?

       2. Is treason still a crime?

       3. When can the police stop and search you?

       4. What is the highest court authority in Britain?

       5. Can you be tried twice for the same crime?

      Ignorance is no defence under the law, so it isn’t enough to say, ‘I didn’t know it was illegal!’ If you don’t know anything about the laws of the land, there will be times when you are effectively helpless. Not everyone has the time or capacity to learn all the ins and outs of the law and its procedures, of course. That is why solicitors and barristers exist – as experts in their field.

      In recent years, attempts have been made to make the law more accessible, by replacing Latin terms such as ‘plaintiff’, ‘writ’ and ‘in camera’ with ‘claimant’, ‘claim’ and ‘in private’. As you might guess, we think that’s a shame. Yet regardless of the language used, there will always be a need for expert defence and prosecution.

      It seems to us that we should all know a few basics. Our usual explanation in this book is that some knowledge is ‘a joy to own for its own sake’. Yet knowledge of the law might be worth rather more, in the right circumstances.

      1

CAN THE QUEEN BE CHARGED WITH A CRIME?

      It is a fairly well-known principle that the Queen cannot be prosecuted with a criminal offence. She also cannot be arrested, interviewed in a police station or even stopped by the police and spoken to. She is quite literally above the law, and for good reason. As well as being our monarch, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is also our head of state (and head of state for many other countries). It is very common that heads of state enjoy immunity from prosecution, one of the primary reasons being to protect the country from scandal and embarrassment.

      The only sitting monarch to be charged with a crime was Charles I, in 1649. He was famously charged with crimes against his own people and executed, following the end of the English Civil War. Parliament established the High Court of Justice to try Charles I for treason, the justification being that the king had made war and a secret pact with the Scots, which had led to great loss of life. The trial was prosecuted by the first solicitor general of England, John Cook, who came from a Leicestershire farming family.

      Following the English Restoration of 1660, which saw Charles II (Charles I’s son) take the throne, a new law was passed that condemned the revolution and its protagonists. Brilliantly named the ‘Indemnity and Oblivion Act’, this piece of legislation delegitimised the entire period following Charles I’s execution up until the Restoration. John Cook, alongside all those who had officiated over the trial of King Charles, was named by the Act as traitor and convicted of regicide. The penalty for such a crime? Cook was hanged, drawn and quartered. He is, however, peerless in legal history as the first lawyer to prosecute a head of state, an event seen by many as the foundation stone of modern international criminal law.

      The closest any modern monarch has come to a brush with the courts was King George V (our current Queen’s grandfather), who in 1910 was accused of bigamy by a republican newspaper. He sued the paper for libel and was apparently prepared to give evidence. However, the attorney general advised that it would be unconstitutional and that put an end to it. The journalist, Edward Mylius, was convicted regardless and sentenced to twelve months in prison.

      Unfortunately for them, the Queen’s wider family do not enjoy the same untouchable status as Elizabeth II. Her daughter, Anne, the Princess Royal, was once summonsed to appear at Slough Magistrates’ Court for speeding. In the absence of a revolution, however, it is almost unimaginable that we will ever see the Queen anywhere near a courtroom.

      Parliament could, of course, change the law in this area if they wished, although they would need the Queen’s assent to pass the Act, so that’s not very likely either!

      2

IS TREASON STILL A CRIME?

      Treason is a crime committed against the Crown and is one of the most infamous and serious crimes a person can face. The original common-law offence was brought into law by the Treason Act 1351. One of the oldest laws still in force in the UK today, it defines treason as:

       Compassing the Death of the King, Queen, or their eldest Son; violating the Queen, or the King’s eldest Daughter unmarried, or his eldest Son’s Wife; levying War; adhering to the King’s Enemies; killing the Chancellor, Treasurer, or Judges in Execution of their Duty.

      Perhaps the most famous traitor in British history is Guy Fawkes, who was brutally tortured and then executed in 1606 for his part in the Gunpowder Plot. The event is still marked today on 5 November, Bonfire Night. The last person to be hanged in this country for the offence of high treason was a man called William Brooke Joyce (aka Lord Haw-Haw), in 1946, for ‘adhering to the King’s enemies’ by spreading Nazi propaganda during WWII. This was despite Joyce being an American citizen at the time and therefore technically not one of the King’s subjects.

      The introduction of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 reduced the maximum penalty for an offence of treason in the UK to one of life imprisonment. The offence of ‘high treason’ has not been used since the war and more recent high-profile prosecutions for behaviour that the public might consider ‘treasonous’ have tended to rely on other offences of a similar nature, such as breaching the Official Secrets Act.

      One of the most famous cases of recent times was that of the former British spy George Blake, who worked as a double agent for the Soviet Union between 1953 and 1961, after being taken prisoner during the Korean War. He was caught and sentenced to forty-two years in prison, the longest sentence in British history at the time – said to represent a year for the life of each MI6 agent he had given up to the Russians. Blake managed to escape from Wormwood Scrubs prison and fled to Russia soon afterwards.

      However, despite the range of modern sentences available, if a British subject made a direct attempt on the Queen’s life today, then he or she could very well expect to be charged and convicted with the offence of high treason.

      3

WHEN CAN THE POLICE STOP AND SEARCH YOU?

      The main powers of the police come from the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, normally referred to as PACE. Section 1 of PACE confers powers on police to stop and search any person where they have a ‘reasonable suspicion’ that the person may be carrying a weapon, illegal drugs or stolen property. They can even search you for perfectly