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Courts where lockdown fines depended on day case was heard
In behind-closed-doors hearings, magistrates handed out fines to lockdown breakers that could depend more on when the case was heard than what a defendant had done
18:14, 30 APR 2021
Updated
Breaking lockdown would land you with a fine, but the courts handing them out have been condemned as opaque and arbitrary (Image: Julian Hamilton/Daily Miiror)
“Unjust” court hearings conducted in private resulted in wildly different punishments for lockdown breaches, the ECHO can reveal. An analysis of lockdown cases dealt with by Merseyside magistrates’ courts in behind-closed-doors hearings last year shows the amount a defendant was fined could depend more on the day their case was heard than on what they had actually done.