Joanna Hardy-Susskind is a legal defence barrister. It’s her job to signify individuals, responsible or harmless, who’ve been charged with offences starting from the minor to the horrific. When these on the surface world discover out what she does, they typically have the identical query: “Why do you do it, in these dusty court docket rooms, in entrance of these imposing judges, sporting a foolish fancy-dress costume, with everybody shouting at one another in Latin?”
You Do Not Must Say Something is her reply. It’s a close-up examination of one of the vital elementary however misunderstood pillars of any society, a department of the state that most individuals not often encounter. Throughout ten brief episodes, we’re led by means of each stage of the legal justice course of: from the again of the police automobile and the interrogation room, behind the scenes as solicitors and barristers hash out their plans, and into the (typically crumbling) court docket itself.
Hardy-Susskind makes an interesting presenter (it’s not that completely different a job to advocating in court docket, when you consider it), and is forthcoming about her much less glamorous experiences – going again to mattress totally dressed at 6am on a Saturday to attend for a name summoning her to court docket, for instance, or leaving her £800 wig at the back of a taxi. However the true magic of this collection are the individuals she interviews “beneath the wigs, beneath the uniforms and within the dock”. Most shifting of all is one in every of her former purchasers, who recounts his panic at being shaken from his sleep and arrested the night time earlier than his college interview, after which the way it felt to be standing in a courtroom years later because the jury delivered their “not responsible” verdict.
This collection doesn’t lionise the legal justice system – the alternative, if something, as Hardy-Susskind delves into how and why issues go improper. However by centring the individuals concerned the programme does demystify it, countering the deceptive narratives pushed by police TV reveals and authorized dramas. Ultimately, this can be a system “with actual humour, coronary heart and humanity – and fewer Latin than you may assume”.
You Do Not Must Say Something
BBC Radio 4
[See also: The woman who made the rape kit]