Why Huw Edwards got such an easy ride in court

This week, ex-BBC newsreader Huw Edwards was sentenced at Westminster Magistrates’ Court after pleading guilty to three offences of making (the legal term for possessing or accessing) 41 indecent images of children. He was given a six-month custodial sentence, which was suspended for two years.

This means he will not serve any time in custody. Instead, he will serve his sentence in the community. If he commits any further offences during the next 24 months, then the sentence for these offences can be ‘activated’ and he can be sent to prison for them – even if the new offence would not normally merit a custodial sentence.

The fact that Edwards will not, as of yet, see the inside of a cell has sparked fierce debate about whether the sentence was too lenient. Some said this is further evidence of a ‘two-tier’ justice system, or that it represents a cosy relationship between the legal system and the BBC.

Cue the inevitable tirade of legal commentators insisting there was technically nothing untoward about Edwards’s sentence. It is certainly true that his sentence is not unusually short and it is perfectly normal for a first-time offender to be given a suspended custodial sentence in cases like this. And, ultimately, the outcome in the case was humane. Edwards is an older man and his reputation has, of course, been destroyed by this case. Nothing would be gained by sending him to prison.

In all sorts of other ways, though, Edwards’s treatment does show that we live under a two-tier justice system. For most defendants, the magistrates’ court is a factory of injustice. Cases in the magistrates’ court are given notoriously short shrift. We lawyers think of them as the Wild West. Thousands of people are convicted every week under the Kafkaesque single-justice procedure, in which a magistrate decides a case behind closed doors without the defendant even being present. Yet for Edwards, the court experience has been comparably easygoing.

Edwards admitted to being in possession of seven Category A images, the most serious form of child pornography. This meant that the judge had a starting point of one year’s custody, with a range of between 26 weeks and three years, depending on the severity of the offence or any mitigating factors. The first job of the magistrates’ court was to determine whether the case was sufficiently serious to be sent to the Crown Court. Here, the magistrates took the decision to ‘retain jurisdiction’, meaning they could deal with it for the purpose of sentencing.

This is a little unusual, although not unheard of. Normally, a case like this – even with a guilty plea – would be sent to the Crown Court for sentencing. Retaining jurisdiction would have signalled to the defence that the sentence would be within the powers of magistrates to deal with. In other words, Edwards would have known in advance that he was not receiving a sentence of over 12 months. This in itself is a luxury not afforded to many defendants.

In normal cases, defendants who plead guilty do so on a ‘full fact’ basis, meaning that they plead to the prosecution’s case as it is contained in the evidence. If they dispute any of the matters in the prosecution evidence, then the Crown can invite the defence to submit a basis of plea, laying out an alternative set of facts. If the Crown doesn’t accept that basis of plea, the case can be sent for what is called a ‘Newton hearing’, where the facts behind the guilty plea can be determined.

In Edwards’s case, the judge accepted a number of the favourable points put forward by the defence without requiring a Newton hearing. More remarkably, he included these facts in the sentencing remarks, even though they made ‘no material difference’ to the sentence. For instance, he accepted that Edwards ‘did nothing more’ with the images other than ‘open the WhatsApp that contained’ them. This fact is irrelevant to the sentencing process yet was nevertheless ‘accepted’ in open court.

The judge also went out of his way to make clear that Edwards did not ‘purchase’ any child-abuse images from the man who supplied them, Alex Williams. He drew a distinction between the act of ‘purchasing’ images and sending money as a gift or way of saying ‘thank you’. He accepted that Edwards had done the latter rather than the former. It was not necessary for the judge to either accept or reject these points, yet he did in this case. The result was to paint Edwards in an ever-so-slightly more positive light.

The sentencing outcome in Edwards’s case was, in my view, justified. But let’s not pretend that he was treated like any other defendant. Yes, some of this is attributable to the public attention that the case received. But it is also, sadly, attributable to the fact that Edwards had significant resources to expend on his defence. People are right to be angry at his absurdly sympathetic treatment from the courts.

Luke Gittos is a spiked columnist and author. His most recent book is Human Rights – Illusory Freedom: Why We Should Repeal the Human Rights Act, which is published by Zero Books. Order it here.