Clampett v Stott
| Jurisdiction | Scotland |
| Judgment Date | 12 September 2001 |
| Neutral Citation | 2001 SCCR 860 |
| Docket Number | No 12 |
| Date | 12 September 2001 |
| Court | High Court of Justiciary |
Lord Cameron of Lochbroom, Lord Marnoch and Lord McCluskey
Justiciary—Summary procedure—Sheriff being made aware in error of previous convictions before charge proved—Whether conviction should be quashed—Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 (cap 46), sec 1661
Section 166 (3) of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 provides that previous convictions are not to be laid before the court until the charge in the present proceedings is proved.
The pannel went to trial on summary complaint in respect of acting in a racially aggravated manner intended to cause alarm and distress. The charge contained an allegation that the offence was committed while the pannel was on bail. Immediately before the close of the Crown case, the fiscal lodged papers in support of the alleged breach of bail. After an adjournment, the fiscal moved to delete the bail aggravation from the charge and withdraw the papers. In error the papers lodged included a list of previous convictions and a social enquiry report. The pannel did not oppose the deletion but opposed the withdrawal of the papers and invited the sheriff to acquit. The sheriff declined to do so, and subsequently convicted the pannel. The pannel appealed. The issue in the appeal was whether the sheriff had been entitled to hold that the events would not give rise to a reasonable apprehension or suspicion on the part of a fair minded and informed member of the public that he was not impartial. The pannel argued that the lodging of documents had constituted a breach of sec 166(3), and that a reasonable observer would suspect that justice was not being done. The Crown argued that there had been no breach of the section as the documents had not been deliberately placed before the court; their nature was only published to the sheriff because the defence had insisted on describing them to him and by that time the bail aggravation had been deleted from the charge; in summary procedure the judge would put any accidental breach out of his mind; and there was no reasonable apprehension of bias.
Held that (1) the sheriff was entitled to have regard to the stated purpose for which the depute fiscal lodged the documents, as indicating that they were not being laid before the court for the purposes of sec 166, and any ostensible breach in these circumstances was excusable as careless rather than deliberate (p 92B); and (2) in any event, the documents ceased to have any further function once the...
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