The other day we were in a remand court, dealing with a rapid-fire succession of cases, most of which we did not sentence, as there were more stages to go through later.
For several hours a large and surly looking man in his twenties sat glowering through the armoured glass of the gallery. He was brought into the bail dock in the late afternoon, It turned out that he was a member of a large and troublesome family that lives on our patch and was due to be committed to the Crown Court on a serious charge. The prosecutor apologetically told us that the committal papers were not complete and he asked for a two week adjournment. We probed further and found out that the case had already been adjourned from one target committal date, and had commenced before Christmas. The defence solicitor opposed the application, saying that her client had now been on restrictive bail conditions for two months, and after a quick discussion we decided to refuse to adjourn, and to discharge the case.
This is never an easy decision to make, but it is wrong to let sloppy work from the police or CPS (either could be at fault) leave a defendant who is innocent until proved guilty in limbo. The Crown can always re-charge a case that has been discharged, but we have to be careful not to leave victims without redress.
And in a similar vein, the constant requests for adjournment of trials due to failure to serve primary disclosure. Chatting to one of our DJ's on Monday, the latest favoured approach seems to be that if Pros can't produce it, to exclude it anyway under S78 PACE and invite prosecution to run trial on whatever evidence they have left. Needless to say, there is usually none. Case Dismissed.
ReplyDeleteThis of course may not satisfy the victims of crime but the defence and pros must be treated fairly and equally. Any criticism for the dismissal of charges in cases where despite a second or third listing of trial, disclosure has still not been made, should not be laid at the feet of the Court in such circumstances.
Sorry bystander the first adjournment should never ever have been granted,
ReplyDeleteIt's even worse when the Bench is presented with some sort of deal which the CPS had doped up with the defence - to ease bail conditions in order to keep the case alive in the face of documents not having been produced or disclosure not delivered on time. Of course magistrates are in no sense bound by the deals that are presented in this way, but it takes a confident chair to seize the initiative and do the right thing and not all chairs are confident (in a good way).
ReplyDeleteHave you come across a defence solicitor doing that? I don't see the point of doing a shady deal when you have a pretty good chance of kicking the whole case into touch anyway.
DeleteMind you I have come across some odd practises out of London.
As always it depends on how serious the offence is and what sort of "evidence" is against the accused. Things go wrong for lots of reasons. The test has to be justice NOT disciplining the prosecution
ReplyDeleteIf prosecution objects in any way to unconditional bail then the court should require the parties to present their arguments.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to variation of bail conditions then the court should never just nod it through but should hear representations as to why the request for variation is being made and offer the prosecution an opportunity to comment.
The decision about bail for a defendant must always remain that of the court and not the parties.
Is 'large and surly looking' some fine legal point which would influence the keen judgement of the courts.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely not. There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face, as someone once said.
ReplyDeleteWe follow structured decision making paths, so we can safely ignore appearances.
I get very frustrated when I read comments criticising the police for failing to supply paperwork. I'm a DC in the Met. My colleagues and I spend hours putting case papers together but owing to budget cuts in the CPS and CJU all too often we find that the papers we have completed are never forwarded on. Its got even worse since we went electronic. At one point out CJU had a mailbox with over 200 unopened emails in it, most of which were case papers. Why would we spend hours arresting, interviewing and charging people and then not bother to properly prepare a case file. We get so angry when we are blamed and criticised in court and we never seem to get a right of reply - except here. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteOne of the problems with the current system is that the CPS and the Police tend to blame each other for failures in cases.
DeleteIMHO the CPS is quick to QA or critique cases submitted to them and reject it if it doesnt reach the appropriate standard, but they wont look into making a weak case legitimately stronger.
And I suspect at the first knockback from the CPS the Police often shrug their shoulders and dont try and pushback or improve the case. (or does resubmitting the same case with a second go at improving the papers count as abuse of process?)
We (oops, I mean a court vaguely near me of which I have heard) had a request out of time for special measures for a witness in a domestic violence case. This came on the day of the trial, despite the witness saying in her initial statement, taken at the scene at the time of the alleged incident, that she would not be comfortable looking the assailant in the eye. This was not an easy decision,as the defence solicitor was objecting strongly. CPS not happy.
ReplyDeleteWent against the CPS in the end and then advised that the accused and victim were sisters.
If the CPS weren't happy you would have thought they could have negated their displeasure by making the application in time in the first place.
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