R (Crown Prosecution Service) v City of London Magistrates Court
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 04 April 2006 |
| Date | 04 April 2006 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISIONAL COURT
Before Lord Justice Maurice Kay and Mr Justice Tugendhat
THERE was no longer a requirement by the prosecutor to serve a notice on the magistrates court and the other parties to the proceedings so that a statement might, under sections 23 and 24 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, be admissible as evidence if the case came to trial.
The Queen's Bench Divisional Court so held when allowing an application for judicial review by the claimant, the Crown Prosecution Service, of two decisions of a single lay justice of the City of London Magistrates Court on June 7, 2005, and July 6, 2005, respectively to discharge the interested party on nine charges in committal proceedings and to stay a remaining charge as an abuse of process of the court.
Mr David Perry for the prosecutor; Mr Stephen Field for Cordelia Gil, the interested party.
LORD JUSTICE MAURICE KAY said that the prosecutor sought to prosecute the interested party in respect of alleged offences relating to use of stolen cheques.
When the matter came to committal in November 2004 the position was that the hearsay provisions in the Criminal Justice Act 2003 had not come into force. The prosecutor sought to rely on sections 23 and 24 of the 1988 Act in relation to business documents.
In order to do that, in November 2004 the procedure in section 5D of the Magistrates Courts Act 1980, as inserted by section 47 of and paragraph 1 and 3 of Part 1 of Schedule 1 to the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996, ought o have been observed.
That required notification to the magistrates court and the accused person of matters set out in section 5D(2).
By the time the matters came back before the magistrates in June 7, 2005, the hearsay provisions in the 2003 Act had come into force by the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Commencement No 8 and Transitional and Saving Provisions) Order (SI 2005 No950) on April 4, 2005. Section 136 of the 2003 Act repealed sections 23 and 24 of the 1988 Act.
His Lordship had no doubt that the hearsay provisions in the 2003 Act did apply to the case. His Lordship applied R v BradleyTLRUNK (The Times January 17, 2005; (2005) 1 Cr App R 397) and R v HTLR (The Times August 22, 2005). So the law applied as amended in June 7, 2005.
However, section 5D of the 1980 Act was not repealed on April 4, 2005; indeed it had not since been...
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