Rapists and criminals might stroll free due to the chaos overwhelming the justice system, main barrister claims

A leading barrister has warned that alleged rapists or other criminals charged with serious crimes could walk free because the justice system is in ‘chaos’. 

Peter Joyce KC said years of under-investment has turned the justice system into ‘a shambles’ – and warned the criminal justice system could be ‘on the brink of collapse’.

Mr Joyce spoke out after it emerged that several crown courtrooms in Nottingham were closed in January because of leaks and broken heating – meaning prisoners could not be brought into the cell area because it was too cold.

The respected barrister said: ‘What I was once proud of has now become a shambles and a disgrace. It was a Rolls-Royce service, and now it’s more like a broken-down East German Trabant.’

Mr Joyce has been a familiar fixture on the East Midlands court circuit for decades and has been instructed in more than 300 murder cases alone, according to his chambers.

During a 56-year career he prosecuted the teenage killers of a mother and daughter in a 2016 trial that saw the defendants likened to Bonnie and Clyde.

The following year, judges lifted restrictions on reporting how Kim Edwards and her boyfriend, Lucas Markham, who were both 14 at the time of the murders in Spalding, Lincolnshire, killed her dinner lady mother Elizabeth Edwards, 49, and sister Katie, 13, as they slept.

Jurors were told the pair – thought at the time to be the youngest defendants to be convicted of double murder in a British court – had sex, shared a bath and watched four Twilight vampire films after the killings. #####

Peter Joyce KC (pictured) said years of under-investment has turned the justice system into ‘a shambles’ – and warned the criminal justice system could be ‘on the brink of collapse’.

Mr Joyce also prosecuted the killers of 14-year-old Danielle Beccan, who was shot as she walked home from Nottingham’s Goose Fair in 2004, and last year represented triple killer Valdo Calocane as he admitted manslaughter by diminished responsibility after a city-wide rampage.

The veteran barrister was later criticised by the families of Calocane’s victims, students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, and 65-year-old Ian Coates, over what they described as his ‘grandiose theatrics’ during the two-day sentencing hearing at Nottingham Crown Court.

Mr Joyce spoke to the BBC after it emerged last week that three of the nine courtrooms at Nottingham Crown Court had been closed due to leaks, while video links were only available in four of them.

Her Honour Judge Shant KC, the Honorary Recorder of Nottingham, appealed for patience as staff struggled to list cases in ‘very challenging circumstances’ in an internal email, which was leaked to a local newspaper.

Earlier last month, an unnamed barrister told a court reporter at the building – the major court centre in the East Midlands – that courtroom five was so cold he could ‘hardly feel my fingers and water is dripping from the ceiling onto one of the seats.’

The same day, prisoners on remand were turned away from the court because the holding cells were too cold to take them in. Just 24 hours later, all cases were stopped and the building was closed for the day because of a faulty heating and fire alarm.

Mr Joyce told the BBC the building was ‘broken’, causing cases to be adjourned for weeks or months with some trials even being abandoned.

He said situation when remand prisoners were turned away ‘because the heating doesn’t work’ was ‘pathetic’.

Last month it emerged that several crown courtrooms in Nottingham were closed because of leaks and broken heating (pictured is Nottingham Crown Court)

Pictured is a letter from the court describing the issues faced in Nottingham 

Mr Joyce added: ‘Every so often water starts coming through the roof. Tiles collapse from the ceilings. There are buckets all over the building because the roof leaks everywhere.’

Mr Joyce says the impact on both defendants and victims is ‘hideous’.

‘You have people who have complained of rape, say in 2020, 2021, 2022, whose trials are not going to happen until 2026, in some cases 2027.

‘Their cases are adjourned, and it happens two or three times, and eventually they say ‘blow it, I cannot be bothered to engage with this any longer’.

‘That is an outrage. The case collapses. And so the alleged rapist just walks away.’

In December, the retired High Court judge who is leading the government’s review into court backlogs said ‘radical’ steps would need to be taken to tackle the ‘crisis’ .

Sir Brian Leveson told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the number of prosecutions waiting to be dealt with was ‘unsustainable’ – with listings now running into 2027.

He spoke out after figures released by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) showed 73,105 trials were unheard at the end of September, almost double the number in 2019.

Sir Brian’s report, due this year, will consider the creation of intermediate courts, where cases could be heard by a judge flanked by magistrates, to reduce the backlog.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said ‘This government inherited a record and rising courts backlog – that’s why we’ve asked Sir Brian Leveson to propose once-in-a-generation reform to deliver swifter justice for victims.’

The MoJ said Nottingham Crown Court was undergoing essential planned maintenance for a replacement roof, works which were scheduled to last for a year, but that recent stormy weather had ‘created unforeseen issues’.

The MoJ said court lists were being managed on a daily/weekly basis to ‘maximise every opportunity to continue to run courts as close as was possible to normal operations’, and that additional funding had created an ‘additional 2,500 sitting days. This had raised court capacity to its highest in almost a decade, the MoJ added.