If the punishment for a crime is a fine, then that is a law for the poor and not for the rich, not by accident but by design, and not as a bug but as a feature. Likewise, if a charge is to be tried by a Magistrates' Court, then that is a charge to which there is in practice no defence, not by accident but by design, and not as a bug but as a feature.
No one ever applied to become a magistrate out of a desire to acquit people. That was not the attraction. Pleading not guilty, never mind trying to mount a defence, would only antagonise the hangers and floggers on the bench. It would amount to an invitation to them to send you to prison when they convicted you, as they were certainly going to do. Now look at how many of the crimes that are punishable by fines are also charges that are tried by Magistrates' Courts.
Even Crown Court juries are now expressly directed to "disregard" the concept of conviction beyond reasonable doubt. This is the machine that is to be empowered yet further by the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. The criminal courts that exist solely as the means whereby the State convicts and sentences those whom the State has charged, and the Police who wave through the applications of members of proscribed neo-Nazi terrorist organisations.
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