RYAN STEVENS v SOUTH EAST SURREY MAGISTRATES COURT andSURREY POLICE
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE AULD,MR JUSTICE PITCHERS |
| Judgment Date | 14 May 2004 |
| Neutral Citation | [2004] EWHC 1456 (Admin) |
| Docket Number | CO/6442/2003 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
| Date | 14 May 2004 |
[2004] EWHC 1456 (Admin)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
DIVISIONAL COURT
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand London WC2
Lord Justice Auld And
Mr Justice Pitchers
CO/6442/2003
MR L BLACKMAN (SOL ADV) (instructed by Lionel Blackman Solicitors, Epsom, Surrey) appeared on behalf of the Claimant
MR S MORLEY (instructed by Force Solicitor, Surrey Police) appeared on behalf of the DEFENDANT
The claimant, Ryan Stevens, seeks permission to challenge by way of judicial review the making by the South East Surrey Magistrates on 16th September 2003 of an anti-social behaviour order under section 1 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, Hooper J (as he then was) having adjourned the application to a Divisional Court and for a full hearing to follow if permission is granted. We grant permission and we treat the arguments submitted to us on the application as the arguments in the claim.
Section 1 of 1998 Act gives magistrates power to make anti-social behaviour orders, the purpose and effect of which typically are to place restrictions on the freedom of movement of individuals who have acted in an anti-social manner, namely:
"1…
(1)(a) … in a manner that caused or was likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to one or more persons not of the same household as himself; and
(b) that such an order is necessary to protect persons in the local government area in which the harassment, alarm or distress was caused or was likely to be caused from further anti-social acts by him."
Applications for such orders are, by section 1(3) of the 1998 Act, made by way of complaint and are thus, when made in the Magistrates Courts, subject to section 127 of the Magistrates Courts Act 1980 which provides for a six month time limit from the occurrence of the matter the subject of the complaint to the making of it. Section 127 reads so far as material:
"… a magistrates' court shall not try an information or hear a complaint unless the information was laid, or the complaint made, within six months from the time when the information was committed, or the matter of the complaint arose."
The suggested single issue in the case is whether section 127 of the 1980 Act prevents an authority in an application for an anti-social behaviour order from adducing evidence of anti-social behaviour that occurred more than six months before the making of the complaint.
I turn briefly to the facts. In support of the application the Surrey Police sought to rely on documentary hearsay evidence of 30 alleged incidents of anti-social behaviour, eight of them within the six months period and 22 before it, the oldest going back to some three years before the hearing itself. The evidence took the form of police incident reports, computerised crime reports and victim statements. There was also a witness statement from a neighbourhood specialist police sergeant responsible for policing the area who had collated all that material and had interviewed victims and complainants of Mr Stevens' behaviour. Many of them, he stated, were unwilling to attend court for fear of reprisals. The police indicated that they were not relying on evidence of the "out-of-time" incidents as similar fact evidence in support of the eight "within-time" incidents and that they did not put them forward as essential background evidence to those incidents. They relied on them solely to support that part of their case going to the necessity under section 1(1)(b) of the Act for making an order.
Mr Lionel Blackman, Mr Stevens' solicitor, asked the magistrates to exclude that evidence, arguing that the police were wrongly putting the "out-of-time" incidents on the same basis as the eight "within-time" incidents, though none of the "out-of-time" incidents had ever been proved by, for example, certificates of conviction, civil proceedings or by way of admission. The only way in which they could have had probative value, he submitted, was for the magistrates to try each of the allegations —and that they had no jurisdiction to do by virtue of section 127. He also argued that to admit such evidence, especially in hearsay form, was in any event unfair to Mr Stevens because he was in no position to meet such stale allegations.
The magistrates rejected Mr Blackman's submissions, ruling that it would be a matter of weight for them when considering the evidence. And they proceeded to try the matter taking into consideration all the documentary evidence on the 30 incidents on which the police relied. They found the eight "within-time" incidents proved and made an anti-social behaviour order in respect of them of two-and-a-half years, subject to specified prohibitions.
Before this court Mr Blackman repeated the submissions he had made to the magistrates and elaborated upon them. Essentially he maintained that this was a simple "temporal" objection, namely that the police had wrongly persuaded the magistrates to try 22 "out-of-time" alleged incidents when, by virtue of section 127, they had no jurisdiction to do so. He submitted that unless such out-of-time allegations were separately proved on their facts in the conventional way of direct evidence or certificate of conviction, they were not admissible simply because they were out-of-time by virtue of section 127. However, he conceded that if the allegations were conventionally proved they could in an appropriate case be admissible on the first question as similar fact evidence. The effect of those submissions, paradoxically, required a more rigorous method of proof for the "out-of-time" allegations than that for those within-time. But, he sought to justify that paradox by contending that use of documentary hearsay evidence to establish incidents extending back over a period of three years was unfairly prejudicial to Mr Stevens and in violation of his right to a fair hearing under Article 6 of the European Convention of Human Rights.
Mr Stephen Morley, on behalf of the Surrey Police, prefaced his submissions with the observation that proceedings for anti-social behaviour orders are rarely commenced in relation to isolated incidents of such behaviour. They are, by their very nature, normally concerned with prolonged and persistent anti-social behaviour consisting of a series of incidents —a course of conduct. He submitted, first, that provided the most recent act or acts of a course of anti-social behaviour the subject of the complaint occurred within a six month period, magistrates have jurisdiction to hear it. He submitted, second, that the complainant authority, where the court has held that it has jurisdiction, may adduce relevant evidence of other incidents outside the time limit, the fairness of admitting it and the weight to be given to it if admitted being a matter for the magistrates. It is, he said, a purely jurisdictional matter, not, as Mr Blackman seemed to be suggesting, where there is jurisdiction, a filter for stale evidence.
In support of his submissions Mr Morley pointed to the twofold requirement for the making of the order, namely that under section 1(1)(a), that a person has acted in an anti-social manner, and that under section 1(1)(b), that it is necessary for the protection of others to make the order and, if so, in what form or what prohibitions to impose. He submitted that, unless magistrates could consider the whole of a defendant's relevant conduct, they...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Birmingham City Council (Respondent/ Claimant) v Glenn Pardoe (Defendant/ Appellant)
...made, within 6 months from the time when the offence was committed, or the matter of complaint arose." 16 In Ryan Stevens v South East Surrey Magistrates' Court and Surrey Police [2004] EWHC 1456 (Admin), the claimant contended that the effect of s127 of the 1980 Act was that an authority a......
-
Chief Constable of West Mercia Constabulary v Boorman
...are made out, then they were wrong. The dictum in the case of Ryan Stevens v South East Surrey Magistrates' Court and Surrey Police [2004] EWHC 1456 (Admin) which was relied upon by the magistrates in their case stated, reads: "An important factor going both to relevance and hence admissibi......