REVIEWS
Published date | 01 March 1974 |
DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1974.tb02378.x |
Date | 01 March 1974 |
REVIEWS
CRIMINAL
APPEALS
:
ENGLISH PRACTICES
AND
AMERICAN REFORM.
By
D.
J.
MEADOR,
[Charlottesville: The University Press
of
Virginia.
1978. 298
pp.
(incl.
index).
$lO.OO.]
1).
J.
MEADOR’S work on the English criminal appeal system
is
not
so
well
known in this country
as
it deserves to be.
His
earlier study of the process
of appellate review of sentences is available only
as
an appendix to the
lieport on Appellate Review of Sentences of tile
A.U.A.
Minitnum
Standards for Criminal Justice Project,
a
document not always readily
found. Happily his more recent exaniination
of
thc working of the Court
of Appeal (Criminal Division) in relation to conviction appeals is now
published indapendently and will undoubtedly And
a
place in any English
Law Library both for the importance
of
its content and
as
an example
of
a
highly successful practical exercise in comparative jurisprudence.
The object of the present study was to examine the English appellate
process for ideas which might usefully be introduced into
a
country whose
appellate courts, hampered by complex and often antiquated procedures,
multiplicity of jurisdictions and high case loads, often fail to perform
tidquately the twiin functions of seeing that justice
is
done to the
individual and that the criminal law develops through the cases on sound
principles.
Far
from advocating the wholesale adoption of English methods,
Iiowevcr, Mendor offers
a
perceptive and critical account of the English
procedures which
is
as
valuable
to
English readers In identifyhg possible
sources
of
weakness
as
it
is for suggesting
a
possible basis for experimenta-
tion in the United States.
Mcador deflnes the central problem of critninnl appeals, and indeed
of
criminal justice generally, in both countries
as
that of volume-how to
keep tlie mass of cases moving
so
as to avoid
a
breakdown of the judicial
inachinery without eroding the quality of adjudication. Observing that
the English court in rccent years has dealt with substantially greater
tinnual case loads than any comparable American court without delays on
the scale found in some Amcrican states, Meador suggests that the
key to the English court’s relative success in this niatter is the working
of the Crim,inal Appeal
office,
a
unique institution whose work is fully
iind accurately described.
His
examination of the working
of
the “single
judge” procedure and the use
of
the power
to
order
loss
of the time
spent in custody pending appeal expresses the anxieties felt by many
English lawyers about these aspects
of
English procedure; it is
a
brave
applicant who goes
on
to the full court after refusal by the single judgc,
but it is by no means unknown for the
full
court to give
leave
in such
circumstances. While the
“
single judge
”
procedure probably represents tlie
most satisfactory compromise attainable between exccssive case loads in
the full court and
a
reasonable standard
of
o.,ppellate adjudication, tlie
practice of allowing the privately represented applicant for leave to
go
straight to the full court is rightly questioned (although It is now
dear
that such npplicants no longer enjoy immunity from losing time). One
point which rnight have recdved more emphasis
than
it docs-although
it
is indeed made at nn carlier stageis that four-fifths of the cases which
the English court deals with are concerned with sentence alone.
It
may
he that
a
screening procedure suffident for review of sentences, where
the court is primarily concerned with the propriety of the result, is not
ncrcqsnrily ideal for conviction review, where both the result and the
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