Will a written transcript be available at any time?
Matters that seemed to be perverse:
1) The Failure of the Public Interest Argument
While Nurse M should not have been accused without proof of being a "mass murderer", there was certainly enough of a case that they should not have been in nursing - anyone who the police had found evidence of theft of hospital drugs, date rape drugs, cannabis, affairs with patients, nuckle duster, and an allegation of GBH, should not have been loose in any hospital or care home. Unfortunately the email / document does not have any follow up, so we don't know whether they stayed in nursing, although they were licensed up to this year. No one seems to have said what action was in fact taken, if any, on this matter - all we know is that they left the General Hospital, and worked in a private care home.
If the list had applied to someone who was not a nurse, but a nursery worker with young children in the States sector, the police vetting report would have put them on a high risk category for future work in the private sector. There seems to have been no indication whatsoever that the authorities took any action over Nurse M being employed elsewhere in Jersey in care homes.
That is not to say that Nurse M couldn't have other kinds of employment, but the record over theft of drugs, to say the least, suggests he shouldn't have been employed anywhere where drugs were available, in the same way that a sex-offender with pictures on their pc wouldn't be allowed to work with young children.
It seems perverse therefore that the public interest argument was totally disallowed, when there was an argument - as the expert witness in th email/report stated - for viewing Nurse M as unsafe in a nursing environment.
2. The Fine / Costs
While the case for giving out names not just of Nurse M, but of others involved in the investigation was always likely to get a sentence (if nothing else because of the risk to named individuals from Nurse M), the level of fine seems to completely ignore Stuart's circumstances.
He has no assets, probably borrows a pc to access the internet (he was certainly doing this around the time of his election), is on income support, out of work, and to sentence him to prison and at the same time impose a huge fine and heavy costs is again perverse. It's like those consequtive sentences that add up to 500 years - it's done purely as an example to others, and it will be most unlikely if he can pay it at all.
3. Bail
When Wesley Snipes was sentenced, despite opposition, he was immediately granted bail pending appeal. This is not unusual - I cite Mr Snipes because it is recent news. If bail was to be granted, why did the application pending appeal have to be made the following day, after a night in prison? It makes no judicial sense, but it makes a lot of sense if it can be seen as giving Stuart a taster of what is to come, to perhaps soften him up, so that he will be more amenable to community service.
4. Contempt of Court
I understand that contempt can be flagged up at any time, but since this was for missed court appearances (when in the UK), any charges to be brought for contempt of court must have been in the Magistrate's mind for some time - it was not the on-the-spot contempt for misbehaving in court, for example - and bringing them out suddenly with a 10 week jail sentence like a rabbit out of a hat even surprised the journalists who spoke of it as a surprise twist. Even if the Magistrate doesn't like Mr Syvret, which clearly she doesn't, this seems more an act of picque, especially as she branded him "arrogant", and more like thinking "let's take him down a peg or two".
There seems to be too much personality in the decision, whereas a cooler approach would have been to bring the charges at a much earlier point in the proceedings, or indeed when he missed the original court appearances, so that they would have been additional charges in this trial.
In conclusion...
It may seem strange to defend Stuart, because I do think he should not have named the Nurse or any other names in the police email / report, but it appears to me that there might be too much of a clash of personalities informing the Court's decision.
