Charge Sheet in UK Law

The judge therefore held that the defendant was indeed actively instrumental in setting the law in motion against the plaintiff. To hold otherwise would, in his view, be an affront to a proper sense of justice. She wanted the plaintiff to be arrested and dealt with from the start, and that is what she achieved in causing DC Haynes to obtain the warrant from the magistrate. She was the only person who could testify about the alleged indecent exposure.

That, to my mind, means this – that if there happens to be a solicitor in the charge office whom the suspect says that he wants to consult for a couple of minutes before deciding whether or not to provide specimens of breath he must be allowed to do so.

Whereas in truth he has only to be satisfied that there is a proper case to lay before the court, or in the words of Lord Mansfield, that there is a probable cause "to bring the accused to a fair and impartial trial", see Johnstone v. Sutton (1786) 1 T.R. 493 at p. 547. After all, he cannot judge whether the witnesses are telling the truth.

The defendant at the trial is usually pressed, as he was in the present case, to declare that he no longer believes that the plaintiff was guilty. They may not appreciate unless they are carefully directed in the summing-up that there is a substantial difference between a case that warrants the making of a charge and one that survives the test of cross-examination with sufficient strength left in it to require consideration by a jury which is concerned only with guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

The grounds of appeal focus primarily on whether the Tribunal's decisions are consistent with Mr Adil's article 10 rights. Ground 1 is that the conclusions on misconduct and impairment were contrary to article 10(1) because they give rise to an interference with article 10 rights that is not “prescribed by law” that, for that reason alone, does not meet the requirements laid down within article 10(2) and is unlawful.

Then there is a further difficulty about that, which is that neither the warrant nor the further letter indicates which provision of the Code that offence falls under. Nor does the warrant tell one with sufficient clarity what is the maximum sentence for that particular offence. It does not say that the maximum sentence for the one offence which is clearly an extradition offence is nine years.

There is no magic formula; only the obligation to make it plain to the suspect by what is said and done that he is no longer a free man. However, what we think is clear is that it is a question of fact, not of law, and it must be left to the jury to decide whether a person has been arrested or not, at least where there is a real dispute as to the question whether the defendant understood that he was being arrested.