Never Plead Guilty: The Perils of a Guilty Plea and the Power of a Jury

Never, ever, plead guilty if you believe you are innocent.

Your solicitor, possibly having the best intentions, possibly not, will try to persuade you otherwise.

Don't trust him or her.

That's what Lucy Connolly did. "Plead guilty and you'll be out by Christmas" was her lawyer's advice. We all know how that worked out for her.

The charge of inciting racial hatred is a serious offence under the Public Order Act 1986 which would place it under the jurisdiction of the Crown Court involving a judge and jury.

If she had pleaded not guilty, she would never have been convicted by a jury of her peers. After all, there was zero evidence that her words, posted on social media for a few hours, incited violence. The riots in Southport did not break out until days later, after the authorities tried to conceal key information about the killer.

The crowdfunding appeal to help her rebuild her life, if she ever gets out, has reached nearly £150,000, which just shows what ordinary people think of her draconian sentence.

During the Horizon Post Office scandal hundreds of innocent men and women were pressurised into pleading guilty. Presumably, they were all advised by their lawyers to plead guilty to avoid the perceived risk of a harsher sentence if they were found guilty, having pleaded the reverse.

A national newspaper recently serialised the experiences of a prisoner on remand for a non-violent crime. It was a devastating indictment of our whole prison system. The reason I mention him is that he too pleaded not guilty against the advice of his lawyer and was freed after the jury exonerated him.

The jury system may have its faults but I'd rather trust the judgement of 12 ordinary men and women than our judges.