Bush Lawyer

Going through Court
The next step after being released on bail is your first court appearance. Bide your time. There is not need to rush into making a plea, as you will most likely have two or three preliminary appearances before anything really happens.

Talk to the duty soliciter as tell them that you wish to enter No Plea while you consider your options.

The legal system wants to find you guilty and sentence you as soon as possible. Do not oblige them.

Until such time as the cannabis laws change, the court are our ideological opponents. Do not let them force you into an early guilty plea.

Although the court are our opponents, they must uphold justice as prescribed by the law of the land. Therefore we can use their own laws against them.

Remember that Lawyers are a part of the legal system too and many of them will try and get you to behave as the system wants you too by encouraging an early guilty plea.

There is a beleif that an early guilty plea will result in a reduced sentence. This is often not true. Once you plead guilty you are at the mercy of the court, whereas if you pleas not guilty, there are many lines of defence open to you.

Even if you are found guilty after a lengthy court case the sentence has to been in line with the standard penalty for the offence.

For example: In a recent court case three cannabis charges (class C, Class B and utensils) were reduced to one charge by the end of the 9 month case. resulting in 125 hours community work. Soon after a another case appeared in the paper with almost indentical charges. The defendant made an early guilty plea, and recieved 6 months in jail.

Although both had broken the law in much the same way, denying the charges for 9 months made the authorities work, while getting it over and done quickly made the defenant easy prey.

Therefore it is strongly advisable to plead Not Guilty even if you know you have broken the law. This is an unjust law so if you want to maintain your dignity, it's not reasonable to accept guilt.

A Not Guilty plea leaves open the option of changing to a guilty plea at a later stage. For example in the case just mentioned, after 9 months of going through court, Police droped the Class B charge in return for a guilty plea on the charge Class C charge.

The longer a case lasts the more work we are making our opponents do, and the more likely they are to reduce the charges to move the process along.

A long court case may seem like a lot of stress, but in reality there may be many months between appearances where you dont have to do anything. Any penalty is also delayed until after the case.