Cameron v Deans
| Jurisdiction | Scotland |
| Judgment Date | 25 November 1901 |
| Docket Number | No. 5. |
| Date | 25 November 1901 |
| Court | High Court of Justiciary |
Lord Justice-Clerk, Lord Low, Lord Pearson.
Conviction and sentence—Signature of magistrate—Warrant to imprison.—
Conviction and sentence on a summary complaint in a Police Court suspended, in respect that the warrant to imprison had been issued before the magistrate had signed the conviction and sentence.
On 16th September 1901 Alexander Cameron, carter, 6 Glebe Street, Renfrew, was charged in the Police Court at Renfrew on a summary complaint, at the instance of the Burgh Prosecutor, setting forth that the accused had committed a breach of the peace.
Cameron pleaded not guilty, but after evidence had been led he was convicted and sentenced to thirty days' imprisonment.
He presented a bill of suspension in which he averred, inter alia;—(Stat. 4) ‘The complainer was conveyed to prison at Glasgow by the train leaving Renfrew at 1.8 p.m. on said 16th September. The police official who conveyed him presented what purported to be an extract of said conviction to the prison authorities at Glasgow, bearing to be signed by the presiding Magistrate. The complainer believes and avers that in point of fact the original conviction had not then been signed by him. It was not signed until the 17th September, a day after complainer had been lodged in prison. In any case, it was not signed when the complainer was removed from Renfrew in charge of a police official in order to be imprisoned in Glasgow. The pretended extract produced to the prison officials, and upon which they acted by imprisoning the complainer, was not a true or correct extract, and was illegal and invalid, in respect that it bore what professed to be the Magistrate's signature appended to it, when, in point of fact, the principal bore no such signature, and there was no signed conviction in existence.’
The complainer pleaded;—The warrant, conviction, and sentence complained of fall to be suspended and liberation granted, with expenses, in respect, inter alia, (2) That the sentence was not signed until after the complainer had been lodged in prison; (3) That the pretended extract conviction was disconform to the principal, of which it bore to be an extract, and was illegal, in respect that the said alleged conviction was not signed, while the extract bore to be signed by the presiding Magistrate; (4) That the sentence was not signed of the date it bears; (5) That the sentence was neither signed in Court nor in the presence of the...
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