Legal Gengar v Stephanie Hayden - Criminal Case - Nick Wallis live tweeting

[SexRealistic]

Nick Wallis - journalist and he of the Gender Blog is live tweeting the Criminal Case brought by CPS.

Per Nicks blog post:

I am attending R v Matthew Heath, at Stratford Magistrates Court. Heath - known to many on X as Legal Gengar - runs the Grift Watch website. He is charged with the harassment of Stephanie Hayden.

Hayden has already had a pop at Heath through the civil courts, dropped his case and now owes him £35,000. Payment is due this week.

This case is a criminal case and therefore an entirely separate process. The hearing will start with a bad character application by Heath's legal team with the aim of getting the case thrown out.

If the district judge sitting in this case refuses to throw the case out, Heath will stand trial immediately afterwards.

Nick is live tweeting and can be found via his blog
genderblog.net/live-tweets/

Oh my word thank you for highlighting this.

Wow, thanks for update and will follow Nick Wallis’ tweets on it.

Thanks for the heads-up. Am following. I assume normal restrictions apply, i.e.that we must not discuss anything whilst court is in session?

Does anyone know what OIC stands for? I couldn’t see a definition.

Officer in the Case?

Ah ok, thanks, sounds plausible!

Officer in Charge?

Officer in the Case? It's the only acronym I can find in online lists that seems to fit.

Or maybe Officer in Charge, or similar

Don't know for sure, but no doubt a proper legal bod will clear it up at some point!

Officer in the case
(Police officer) 😊

At a complete guess, Officer In Charge? No actual idea though!
(Quick check online...)
https://www.cps.gov.uk/prosecution-guidance/disclosure-manual-chapter-3-roles-and-responsibilities says: An officer in charge of an investigation (OIC) ... The responsibilities of the OIC include ensuring that reasonable steps are taken for the purposes of the investigation and, in particular, that all reasonable lines of enquiry are pursued as well as to ensure that proper procedures are in place for recording and retention of material obtained in the course of the investigation.

It's a bit unfortunate for the prosecution case that the OIC is on annual leave & not appearing even though the defence wanted them as a witness. At least that's what I have gathered so far although I find this web page confusing to follow.

It's not just that, the CPS haven't followed any of the processes they are supposed to, haven't made any disclosure to the defence despite being asked repeatedly since February, have now fully accepted a whole Bad Character Application about the claimant but are still insisting the whole case is good to go.

It's a complete shambles.

When I have a case going to court I always attend even if I'm warned or not.
These trials are your babies, you've been working on them for months.
AL can be denied and if we have a court case we often ask a stand in to attend on our behalf.

I'm surprised they haven't turned up. Maybe they think it's a duff case and don't want to show their face.
If they have been warned as a witness they could be in real trouble.

Re improper disclosure, this does not suprise me at all, the court system is a total fucking shambles and the barristers often don't read the case papers until the morning of the trial.

Requests for disclosure should be sent to the OIC prior to ten days before the trial so I'm not sure where the hold up is there...

Wow. That was a bit of a rollercoaster ride!

I feel like there is at least no risk of Bundlegate this time. Because there are no documents. What an absolute shit-show by the Crown. I note that they [edit: the Defence, not the Crown] got the point of the process being the punishment in (paraphrased), further confirmed when the next available date would be in September.

Are there any limits to costs in situations like this? I think I've only ever followed tribunals before, and I expect Magistrates Court to be a bit different.

So - Matthew Heath has been accused of harassing Stephanie Hayden.

Some things mentioned including tweeting and sharing experian files.

Heath has had good lawyers and has pulled together a bad character evidence application file showing how Stephanie Hayden did / does worse online.

This is a criminal trial but the Crown Prosecution Service has been awful. They haven’t responded to any disclosure requests, they haven’t reconsidered the case when presented with evidence, the officer in charge wasn’t asked for disclosure until last week (I think Heaths team made request in February). Officer in charge isn’t even present in Court despite being called as a witness by defence. The crown prosecutor is in all day training and responds via email - calls disclosure requests a fishing exercise.

Heaths legal team are seeing the entire case to be stayed because all this adds up to lack of fair trial.

The CPS have just won a point prior to that. Judge says a delay to September won’t prejudice justice but will allow the CPS to remedy the defects in their case. Overriding objective of claimants getting justice and what not.

Reading between the lines judge is very unimpressed by CPS but as criminal reluctant to throw out wholesale.

Gosh so many coincidences eh?

Here the CPS will be liable for costs - and not full costs as criminal (unless Matthew is already legally aided??) so won’t be all singing all dancing.

Stephanie Hayden gets to abuse process for free.

All in the same direction - toward trans ideology……

To summarise, no witnesses (PC Copper on holiday/unaware that they are a witness) CPS at a conference/training (but can send the occasional email) and no prosecution bundle?
Apols, just trying to make sense of the whole thing over lunch.

Have they had the bad character application yet?

Sorry for going through all the "reacts" - I wanted "thank you" , but it still looks like waving to me!

I’m not too sure on BCA. I think that Nick can’t tweet it - but also there has been a stay in proceedings since the prosecution is MIA.

..since the prosecution is MIA.

More like AWOL, really.

I'm trying to work out whether this is just the CPS being overloaded/useless or if Hayden has somehow manipulated this to his advantage.

I've been following his abusive legal antics for years, and can't wait for him to be finally stopped. Looks like it might not be today though, alas.