Haque, R (On the Application Of) v Central Criminal Court

When deciding whether to extend a custody time limit, the court must identify the real, root or principal cause of the need for the extension. It need not refuse an extension merely because the prosecution has made an avoidable administrative error, unless that error caused the need for the extension or affected readiness for trial. The statutory reference to a time limit imposed by the regulations includes a time limit previously extended by the court under the statute. A reviewing court may decline to quash a decision where the lower court reached the correct result for essentially the correct reason, despite subsidiary errors or imperfect reasoning.

The claimant was charged with murder and detained under custody time limits. The Central Criminal Court extended the custody time limit after the trial fixture had to be vacated because the defence needed time to obtain expert evidence concerning DNA material on trainers. A second prosecution expert report had been served late, but the first report had been served on the claimant’s former solicitors and no timely defence expert report had been obtained.

Judge Dunn QC found that the prosecution had generally acted with due diligence and expedition, and that the principal cause of the adjournment was the failure of the first solicitors to obtain expert evidence promptly. The claimant sought judicial review, challenging that conclusion and raising the interpretation of section 22(3) of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985.

1. Application refused. The decision to extend the custody time limit was not quashed. The claimant was entitled to detailed assessment of his costs. No order for the defendant’s costs was made.
2. Section 22(3) of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 permits an extension where the need is due to a good and sufficient cause and the prosecution has acted with all due diligence and expedition. The two requirements are linked. The court must ask whether the need for the extension arose from prosecutorial lack of diligence, rather than treating every avoidable lapse as automatically fatal.
3. Following the approach in R v Leeds Crown Court ex parte Quereshi and R(Rippe and others) v Chelmsford Crown Court, the relevant inquiry is the real, root or principal cause of the need to break the trial fixture. It is not enough that something done by the prosecution contributed to the need in any way.
4. The late service of the second expert report was an error. However, the report concerning the jacket could not be adduced without leave under rules 3 and 5 of the Crown Court (Advance Notice of Expert Evidence) Rules 1987, and the Crown indicated that it would proceed without that evidence rather than vacate the trial. The principal cause of the adjournment was therefore the failure of the first solicitors to obtain expert evidence about the trainers.
5. The court declined to speculate about whether an earlier expert report might have produced an earlier trial date, because that issue had not been properly canvassed before Judge Dunn. Any procedural imperfections did not undermine the essential reasoning or the correctness of the result. In those circumstances, quashing the decision would not serve the interests of justice.
6. The opening words of section 22(3), referring to a time limit imposed by the regulations, include a time limit previously extended by the court under the statute. Otherwise, the established practice of granting further extensions would produce serious practical difficulties.

The claimant sought judicial review of Judge Dunn QC’s decision to extend the custody time limit in proceedings before the Central Criminal Court. The Administrative Court upheld the essential reasoning and refused the application.