trial judge

[nailit]

If you are found guilty after a crown court trial, does it automatically follow that the judge who conducted the trial will also be the sentencing judge or could it be a different judge?
Also could you be tried (and/or sentenced) by a judge that had at one time been your defence barrister 10 years ago?
I wont have access to the internet for 5 days or so now, so many thanks in advance for any replies.

[EDDIE51]

If you are senenced at a later date than the trial then it can be a diffrent judge. Depends which Judge is on duty on the day.
I don't know about the second question, but all Judges were Barristers before being selected as a judge so the situation must be quite common. I woud think the judge would have to excuse himself from the trial and get another judge to take it. Not at all sure though.

[FredPuli43]

The judge who had been the person's defence counsel might, conceivably, excuse himself from the trial ten years later, but that's pretty unlikely.It would require some unusual circumstances,which would bar any judge on grounds of partiality, such as a strong friendship having developed between them in subsequent years or the defendant having committed some crime against the judge himself.

Defence counsel are not friends or judges of clients, they are just defending them and that is an impersonal arrangement; defence counsel is there to get a result, and doesn't care what kind of person the client is , good, bad or average. They may, indeed, have prosecuted them or defended them and then done the reverse in some later trial, which does sometimes happen, particularly when the defendant is a serial offender.

And, as counsel, the judge is unlikely to have had ( or remember), any material information, adverse to the defendant, which is not now before him in a trial or sentencing.

[nailit]

Thanks EDDIE and Fred, much appriciated.