R (Surat Singh) v Stratford Magistrates Court
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Lord Justice Hughes,Mr Justice Treacy |
| Judgment Date | 03 July 2007 |
| Neutral Citation | [2007] EWHC 1582 (Admin) |
| Docket Number | Case No: CO/5416/2006 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
| Date | 03 July 2007 |
[2007] EWHC 1582 (Admin)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
Lord Justice Hughes
Mr Justice Treacy
Case No: CO/5416/2006
Shaun Murphy, Solicitor Advocate (instructed by Edwards Duthie ) for the Claimant
Tim Baldwin (instructed by Crown Prosecution Service ) for the Defendant
Hearing dates: 28 th June 2007
Crown Copyright ©
This application for judicial review concerns the meaning and ambit of section 37(3) Mental Health Act 1983 when an accused in the Magistrates' Court contends that he was insane at the time of the events charged.
The Police were called to the home of Mr Surat Singh. They found him in an excitable and aggressive mood. He punched one police officer in the face. He kicked the other, causing him to fall into some bushes. He was arrested and taken to the police station. There, the doctors who saw him found a clear degree of cognitive impairment and discovered that there was a long history of some level of schizophrenic symptoms. He was in his late forties and had no previous conviction.
Mr Singh was charged with the summary offence of assaulting a police officer in the execution of his duty, contrary to s 89 Police Act 1996. There was a comparatively lengthy series of hearings. He pleaded not guilty. He formally admitted the facts which I have set out. His solicitor indicated that the defence of insanity would be advanced. She served a report of a psychiatrist approved under s 12(2) Mental Health Act which expressed the opinion that at the time of the incident he was labouring under such defect of reason from a disease of the mind as not to know the nature and quality of his act. It was not suggested that Mr Singh was unfit to stand trial.
The District Judge before whom the trial came on 12 April 2006 adjourned it of his own motion for a second psychiatric report. He did so with a view not to investigation of the issue of insanity, but to proceeding under section 37(3) Mental Health Act 1983, that is to say in order to consider making either a hospital or guardianship order without convicting the accused. On 10 May 2006, the District Judge declined to change that decision.
Mr Singh has applied for judicial review of that decision. He contends that the magistrate was obliged to proceed to verdict. The proceedings in the magistrates' court stand adjourned pending the resolution of his application.
Jurisdiction
In general terms this court will not entertain, whether by application for judicial review or by way of appeal by case stated, a purely interlocutory challenge to proceedings in the magistrates' court. Lord Widgery CJ put the point thus in R v Rochford Justices ex p Buck (1978) 68 Cr App Rep 114, in which the Crown complained that the magistrates had wrongly excluded relevant evidence:
"It is very unsatisfactory in this Court to be asked on an application for a prerogative order to deal with proceedings in a lower Court which have not run their course and which are still ending so the that application is in respect of an interlocutory matter…
I think that the right course here would have been for the prosecution to go on with their case, accepting with good grace the justices' decision, and then, if at the end the prosecution failed, they could come here on a case stated and we should have a firm basis of fact on which to decide the issues…
The obligation of this Court to keep out of the way until the magistrate has finished his determination seems to me to be a principle properly to be applied both to summary trial and to committal proceedings."
The position is the clearer in an appeal by case stated, because it has been held that the right to ask for a case to be stated does not arise until the proceedings in the court below have resulted in a final determination: Loade v DPP [1990] 1 QB 1052.
This point was not taken before us, and we have not heard argument upon it. We nevertheless should draw attention to the general rule, because it is important that proceedings in a magistrates' court should not be punctuated by expeditions to this court when one or other party is the object of a ruling which it does not like. It is necessary, in nearly every case, to wait until the end result of the proceedings is known before anyone can tell whether there is a source for complaint or not, and also before the facts of the case can reliably be known for the purposes of decision here.
We were persuaded that we should deal with the point which arises in this case because
i) over a year has now passed in which the magistrates' court proceedings have been at a standstill; any further delay is highly undesirable;
ii) the parties were both ready to argue the issues and anxious that they should be resolved;
iii) the case does not depend on any dispute of fact;
iv) the substantive application of Mr Singh is for a mandatory order requiring the magistrate to conduct a trial, which it is contended he is declining to do.
This court has sometimes been persuaded to consider a case which is interlocutory where there is good reason for doing so: see for example R (Watson) v Dartford Magistrates Court [2005] EWHC 905 (Admin) and the discussion in Essen v DPP [2005] EWHC 1077 (Admin). That we have been persuaded to do likewise should not be taken as any encouragement to others minded to launch interlocutory applications; they are very likely to be dismissed out of hand. Indeed in this case, had the point been spotted earlier, we take the view that this application would have been likely to be regarded as premature because, as will be seen, it is not yet clear whether there will or will not be a trial of the issue of insanity, whether to verdict or otherwise.
Section 37(3) Mental Health Act
Two statutory provisions are at the centre of this case: s 37(3) Mental Health Act 1983, and s 11 Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000.
Section 37(3) Mental Health Act 1983 provides as follows:
"Where a person is charged before a magistrates' court with any act or omission as an offence and the court would have power, on convicting him of that offence, to make an order under subsection (1) above in his case as being a person suffering from mental illness or severe mental impairment, then if the court is satisfied that the accused did the act of made the omission charged, the court may, if it thinks fit, make such an order without convicting him."
The 'order under subsection (1)' which is there referred to is either a hospital order or a guardianship order. They are available to magistrates in any case where the offence carries imprisonment on summary conviction, providing that the necessary medical evidence required by subsection (2) is present, and providing (as required by subsection 2(b)) that the court is of opinion that such an order is the most suitable method of disposing of the case.
Section 11 of the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000 provides:
"If, on the trial by a magistrates' court of an offence punishable on summary conviction with imprisonment, the court –
(a) is satisfied that the accused did the act or made the omission charged, but
(b) is of the opinion that an inquiry ought to be made into his physical or mental condition before the method of dealing with him is determined,
the court shall adjourn the case to enable a medical examination and report to be made, and shall remand him."
It will be seen that subsection (a) repeats exactly the words used in section 37(3) of the Mental Health Act, viz 'satisfied that the accused did the act or made the omission charged'. Section 11 therefore contemplates a section 37(3) case, in which the possibility of a hospital or guardianship order without conviction is being considered, and provides for adjournment for medical examination and report to inform the decision.
The issues
The history gives rise to the following issues in this court:
i) Was the District Judge's order adjourning with a view to order under s 37(3) Mental Health Act wrong because it deprived Mr Singh of a trial and verdict to which he was entitled ?
ii) Is the defence of insanity in any event available to an accused in the Magistrates' Court ? It was not contended before the District Judge that it was not, but the Crown Prosecution Service, as interested party in this application, now so submits.
iii) What is the nature and extent of the powers of a Magistrates' Court under s 37(3) ?
It will be apparent that it is sensible to approach these questions in the order (ii), (iii) and then (i).
Insanity in the Magistrates' Court.
The argument of the Crown Prosecution Service that insanity is not available as a defence in the Magistrates' Court runs like this:
i) Insanity goes to negative mens rea.
ii) The decisions of the Court of Appeal in Attorney General's Reference No 3 of 1998 [2000] QB 401 (an insanity case) and of the House of Lords in R v Antoine [2001] 1 AC 340 (a case of unfitness to plead) establish that when in such cases in the Crown Court the question is investigated whether the Defendant did the act or made the omission charged, the court is not concerned with the state of mind of the accused. Thus lack of intent, or provocation, or diminished responsibility, are irrelevant to the question.
iii) The procedure examined in those cases does not apply in the Magistrates' Court. Rather, section 37(3), taken with section 11 Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000, provides a comprehensive code for...
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