House of Lords
| Author | JA Coutts |
| DOI | 10.1177/002201839706100103 |
| Published date | 01 February 1997 |
| Date | 01 February 1997 |
| Subject Matter | House of Lords |
HOUSE
OF
LORDS
JUDICIAL REVIEW OF
COMMITI
AL
RvBedwel/ty JJ.
ex
pWilliams
Where the magistrates have committed a defendant to the Crown Court
for trial on indictment and it is shown that the committal was based solely
on inadmissible evidence, may that committal be quashed on an
application for judicial review by way of an order of certiorari? In Rv
Bedwel/ty JJ, ex pWilliams [l996J 3 All ER 361, the Divisional Court
stated that, although there was no admissible evidence before the justices
which would justify the committal of the applicant for judicial review, it
was not the practice of that court to quash a committal on the ground of
the inadmissibility or insufficiency
of
the evidence. The court certified as a
point of law of general public importance the question whether it was
open to the Divisional Court to quash by certiorari a committal made on
the basis of the misreception of inadmissible evidence, where there was no
other evidence sufficient to put the accused on trial by a jury; and, if so,
on what principle the court was to exercise its discretion.
The applicant for judicial review in that case was acquitted on a charge
of assault, having called three witnesses in support of her evidence that
she had acted in self-defence. She and her co-defendant and the three
witnesses were later charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of
justice. They did not contest the committal proceedings on that charge,
but the applicant for judicial review, as she became later, required the
magistrates to consider the evidence against her under s 6(1) of the
Magistrates' Courts Act 1980. The magistrates received the transcripts of
the interviews held by the police with the defendants and the witnesses of
the former trial, and the witnesses made statements which implicated the
applicant. On that evidence, and no more, she was committed for trial
with the others, although, of course, nothing of what was said was
admissible evidence against her. Subsequently, the Crown sought to rectify
the defect in the committal proceedings by serving on the applicant witness
statements (which complied with s 9of the Criminal Justice Act 1967)
after her committal, claiming that they remedied the defect by
demonstrating that the prosecution intended to bring further evidence
against the applicant at the trial, which certainly would be admissible and
which would tend to prove her guilt.
In the interviews the three witnesses from the original trial confessed
that they had not been present at the incident, at which they had sworn
that they were present. The magistrates received these statements as
evidence against the applicant for no reason other than that the witnesses'
statements had implicated her. They accepted the statements as evidence
upon which they could base her committal; and there was no suggestion
that they considered anything else in her case, although she protested that
she was quite unaware that the witnesses who had supported her at her
trial had not in fact been present at the incident of which they so
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