When the government initially brought in the 500 word limit on defendant statements in the court, the overriding rationale extolled both by the government and the enthusiastic right wing press was that, by so limiting the amount the accused could say in their own defence, the overall length of a trial, and therefore correspondingly the cost, would be reduced significantly.
It was also argued that the fairness of the proceedings would be improved by limiting the extent to which the personal charm and persuasive (but insubstantial) rhetoric of the defendant or their legal team would affect the outcome of trials by appealing to and inflaming the inherent biases and prejudices of the jury.
The final major claim for the necessity of the limit was that, by forcing the defendant to concisely focus their statements on the matter at hand, truth (now unvarnished) would be more transparent and lies (now unembellished) more apparent.
The ultimate reasons the police force and the Crown Prosecution Service were so enthusiastic about the limit were more prosaic and less idealistic, however: they believed they would lead to an increase in conviction rates.
For example, in cases where the details of the crime as laid out by the prosecution were heavily disputed by the defence, pleas for leniency or even acquittal based around mitigating circumstances or diminished responsibilities were likely to be reduced, for it would likely be unwise to waste now precious moments on such extraneous and often emotional details, rather than to concentrate as concisely as possible on the factual details that could prove beyond doubt an individual’s innocence.
Conversely, in cases where the facts were harder to dispute, pleas for leniency would take precedent over arguing the details of the case itself (in America, where plea bargaining is much more common, conviction rates approach 95%, whereas in the UK, where it is relatively rare, conviction rates hover instead at a lowly 80%).
The government’s reasoning behind the change was more ideological still. The limit was devised as a method to reduce complex argumentation around points of law, thus forcing simpler, more “commonsensical”, readings of statute and precedent. (The state itself was still free to argue at an increased level of complexity when it desired, due to no reciprocal limit on word usage by the prosecution.)
In this way, the legal system was able to be brought in line with a laypersons everyday understanding of the law of the land (actually, a mutually beneficial state and media induced representation of such). This reduced law and justice to, in effect, a feeling of what was right, so that the (inevitable) guilty verdict carried with it an emotional certitude and populist appeal to natural justice that together overpowered any argumentation or dissent by oppositional voices. The people’s law spoke for the people. Opposition to the law was, therefore, opposition to the people.
In this way, justice became retribution.
“18 words of your personal limit left,” the court clerk advised me.
I’ll have to use them well.
___________
Notes:
1. I wrote this in 2010
2. Apparently
3. I don’t really remember it but it’s in my notes so I probably did
4. It probably felt like satire at the time
5. But now I’m just surprised it’s never actually happened