Spoiler alert – those not yet up to speed on Happy Valley, look away now.
This is an extract from our Crime and court newsletter written by Tom Seaward.
I have a lot of time for Happy Valley.
The writing’s crisp, the plot extraordinary and you can recognise in each of the on-screen police officers characteristics you come across time and again in real life officers.
But how good is it at portraying courts and reporters? Here, I’m afraid, I have a few gripes.
I’ve never been to Leeds Crown Court – the building where Tommy Lee Royce appears to plead guilty to murder in episode four of the present series – so I don’t know whether or not it has ‘open-topped’ docks.
It’s quite rare nowadays to find a crown court that has them.
READ MORE: BBC Happy Valley spoilers - Teaser for final episode released
When I started as a reporter there was a court clerk who told stories of trying to wrestle would-be escapees as they made a leap for freedom.
To the chagrin of reporters interested in some drama, secure docks – fronted by heavy glass going all the way to the ceiling – have largely put an end to courtroom escapes.
So it was a slight surprise to see Royce, already serving a life sentence for murder and expected to be pleading guilty that morning to his second killing, being brought up into a non-secure dock.
Inevitably, he headbutts the dock officers and makes a Spiderman-like bid for freedom over the lip of the glass-sided but open-topped dock.
I just feel he’d have been in a secure dock.
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Second gripe? I’d have expected Royce to be dealt with by a High Court judge. But the red-sashed, purple-and-black robed judge in Happy Valley’s court scene was a circuit judge.
Circuit judges routinely deal with murder trials if they have a ‘murder ticket’ – the Recorder of Oxford Judge Ian Pringle KC is one such judge.
But if the man – or woman – in the dock is at risk of receiving a whole life tariff (meaning they will spend the rest of their life in jail) because they are a serial killer, the murder was particularly sadistic or part of a terror attack, a High Court ‘red’ judge is often parachuted in.
Third? Why was journalist Richard sitting in the public gallery rather than the press bench?
Lots of questions. Few answers.
This is an extract from our weekly Crime and Court newsletter which you can sign up to here for free.
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