Judicial Committee of the Privy Council
| Published date | 01 May 1992 |
| Date | 01 May 1992 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/002201839205600204 |
| Published By | Sage Publications, Inc. |
| Subject Matter | Judicial Committee of the Privy Council |
JUDICIAL
COMMITTEE
OF
THE
PRIVY
COUNCIL
RIGHT
TO
HEARING
WITHIN A REASONABLE TIME
Mungroo VR.
'The
right to a trial "within areasonable time" secures, first, that
the accused is not prejudiced in his defence by delay and, secondly, that
the period during which an innocent person is under suspicion and any
accused suffers uncertainty and anxiety is kept to a minimum' (per Lord
Templeman in Mungroo v R [1991] 1 WLR 1351. In that case, the appellant
claimed that the proceedings against him in Mauritius should have been
stayed as the delay between his arrest (in July 1981) and his being brought
to trial (in March 1985) constituted an infringement of his constitutional
rights. Section 10(1) of the Constitution of 1981 provides that where a
person is charged with a criminal offence 'the case shall be afforded a fair
hearing within a reasonable time'.
The first question raised by the appeal was as to the time of the delay:
when does that time begin to run? In Police v Labat [1970] MR 214, the
Supreme Court of Mauritius held that it runs from the moment at which
he is 'charged', which was taken to mean 'arraigned' and that this in turn
means that he must be tried within a reasonable time after the information.
In Bell v
DPP
[1985] AC 937, the Privy Council, on a consideration of
similar provisions in the Constitution of Jamaica, held that the requirement
is that the accused be tried within a reasonable time after arrest: Indeed,
the Board added that, where a court is considering the question of whether
areasonable time has been exceeded before the conclusion of the hearing
of a criminal charge, it may even be proper to take into account the period
before the accused is arrested. The Board therefore concluded in the
present case that Police v Labat cannot be relied on in any consideration
of the length of any alleged delay.
The second question was that of the factors which must be taken into
account when considering whether the delay was reasonable. Here, the
accused was arrested and served with a provisional charge of forgery, upon
which charge he was given bail. That charge was not laid until more than
two years later (in May 1983). The Attorney General then entered a nolle
prosequi (in September 1983) and indicated that a new charge would be
made. The police investigation into the affairs of the body from which the
accused was believed to have obtained money as a result of the forgeries
was taken over by another police investigator, who came to the conclusion
that the proper charge against the accused was, not forgery, but swindling.
A new
charge-of
employing afraudulent pretence by presenting a forged
document and thereby swindling the body in
question-was
laid (in
February 1985), to which (a month later) he pleaded not guilty, but on
'which he was convicted. He had complained to the magistrate that he
was the victim of 'unconscionable' and unconstitutional delay, but the
168
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