The Legal Brief -19th April 2023

Families are urging Dominic Raab to force criminals to attend their own sentencing hearings. Currently, those convicted of offences, do not have to attend their sentencing hearing. However, it has been proposed that this law needs to change.

Aunt of Zara Aleena, Farah Naz is leading marches against male violence to persuade Dominic Raab to act. Zara Aleena was sexually assaulted and murdered by Jordan McSweeney, whilst walking home in June 2022. This case came to the public eye due to the fact that the murder was committed 9 days after Mr McSweeney was released from prison on licence. Mr Jordan McSweeney refused to attend his sentencing hearing, which left the family feeling like justice had not been accomplished.

This issue was also highlighted when Olivia Pratt-Korbel, aged 9, was shot in her home in Liverpool in August 2022. Thomas Cashman was charged with the murder of Olivia and the attempted murder of her mother Cheryl. In this instance, Mr Cashman also refused to attend court to be sentenced, which was seen as disrespectful to her mourning family.

?After this, Dominic Raab said he was looking into whether the law could be amended to compel offenders to attend their sentencing hearings. This could be by granting judges powers to impose longer prison sentences if those convicted refused. It has also been suggested that if an offender does not attend his sentencing hearing could be seen as an “Aggravating Factor”.

This change has been reviewed multiple times, but it is yet to be changed. Most recently in 2022, the idea was raised in the House of Commons by Justice Minister James Cartlidge. Those who agree with this change believe that the defendant should ‘face the consequences of their crimes’ and ‘face the victim's families’.

The risk that comes with imposing this is the issue of the rights of the offender and it also potentially heightens the risk of violence and danger. This could include the risk to those transporting the offender who does not want to attend, the risk to the families and the risk to the offender.

Written by Gabrielle Coates

Tech giant Apple are lining up a move into a new sphere of influence, with plans being announced to add a high yield savings account to their offering in the United States.

The account, which is being managed in conjunction with Goldman Sachs, is offering a much larger interest level than the national average for savings accounts in the US - it had claimed to be able to offer 10x that average, and was at a whopping 4.15% yield when it launched yesterday.

Interestingly, this account has no minimum deposit limit, and is guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp for up to $250k. The account itself will be savings only for the time-being, with the necessity for funds to be transferred into a regular current account, or Apple Cash account, to be able to spend them.

This is a big move from Apple towards offering financial services, and a potential future where your iPhone could provide everything you need from a phone and a wallet, simultaneously.

This could also be a move that is well targeted for a tech company. As iPhones are generally quite expensive, these accounts, and the linked Apple Cash accounts are likely to be, on the whole, owned by users with a higher income. As well as meaning more deposits, and greater financial power for Apple, these users are also less likely to experience financial difficulty, and default, and, as such, will solidify and stabilise this service going forwards.

The only question is; will users like the simplicity of having everything in one device? Or is this a little too much of a risk for some consumers?

Written by Duncan Balcon

Many readers will have had experience with Discord, or at least will have heard of the platform. Founded in 2015, it was launched as a communication platform for gamers to use whilst gaming, either with each other, or separately.

Lockdown skyrocketed the popularity of the service, taking it up to 200 million users, which is roughly speaking a quarter of the numbers of users on a Snapchat, and about half that of the Twitter user-base. These users have, however, expanded significantly from the sole demographic of gamers, and Discord is now used by a range of individuals, and organisations, to allow team members to liaise, file share, and build relationships.

Discord is also set apart from the likes of Snapchat and Twitter by its main stream of income. Rather than relying on advertising, like many rivals, Discord offers a $9.99pcm subscription service, called Nitro, which offers more tools to users and makes the platform a “Swiss army knife” that can perform a large number of tasks.

Due to this increase in users, and popularity, and the linked income increase, there have been rumours of Discord listing via an IPO in the near future, following raising $500m in 2021. This is a sizeable valuation of the company, and a move to IPO could see the value rated even higher.

It will be interesting to see what moves the company take next, however, as it could be deemed to be a little early to rush into an IPO, due to that recent money raising round. Also, with global IPO action struggling, and interest in tech being more focussed on AI currently, this could also be seen as a bad time to float the company by any means.

It would appear that Discord is well placed to continue to grow, and may be a good prospect for IPO in the future, and it will be interesting to see what the coming months and years will bring.

Written by Duncan Balcon

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