ABSTRACT
This chapter and the next focus on the impact of the segmentation and segregation practices discussed in the last chapter on key participants in the trial. Whilst all those involved in the trial have been affected by the changes in spatial practices which occurred from the late eighteenth century onwards in courthouses and courtrooms, they were affected in very different ways. Changes to the courthouse and courtroom which emerged over that period provided some users with space in which they could retreat from the public areas of the court, whilst for others the impact of segregation and segmentation meant that their movement was increasingly constrained and restricted in public areas. The shifts in thinking about the spatial confi gurations of the courthouse which these design trends refl ect are far from being politically neutral. Indeed any treatise on court architecture can just as easily focus on the courtroom as a contested space as it could on the more familiar discourse of stability, tradition and gravitas which generally surround discussions of courts. Spatial arrangements determine the mode and range of verbal interaction and emphasise the relative status of the people present and their territorial rights. But is it appropriate that historical precedents developed in different eras and refl ecting different conceptions of due process continue to infl uence court design and render the courtroom a frozen site of nostalgia (Graham 2004)? I argue here that spacing and placing of people in the trial is strategic to their ability to participate effectively in proceedings and that insuffi cient account of users’ experience of segmentation is paid by contemporary policy makers in the current Court Standards and Design Guide (Her Majesty’s Courts Service 2010). This chapter concentrates on the spatial capital allocated, claimed and enjoyed by two key fi gures in the trial; defendants and their lawyers. Though their enjoyment of space takes very different turns their stories are interwoven for as lawyers, and barristers in particular, begin to claim more space for themselves in the well of the court the defendant became increasingly isolated at the bar and progressively encased within a fortifi ed dock. The importance of these accounts of space is that they make clear the ways in which two key ideals to which the criminal justice system has long aspired are undermined by architecture and design; the
presumption of innocence and the right to consult counsel. In the sections which follow I consider how it is that the defendant and their advisers became separated in the trial so that counsel now sit with their back to their client. How is it that the defendant, while still presumed innocent, came to be contained in a dock? These practices are particularly interesting given that in the United States, arguably the most security-conscious country in the world, the defendant and their counsel sit shoulder to shoulder in the inner area of the court. I will argue that the positioning of the defendant and lawyer in the English trial is a matter which is ripe for reform if key ideals of the criminal justice system are to be realised and enjoyed.
