Dawson & Ors, R (on the application of) v Crown Court At Newcastle Upon Tyne

When deciding whether to extend a custody time limit, the court must consider both whether there is good and sufficient cause and whether the prosecution has acted with due expedition. The due-expedition requirement protects defendants from unjustified detention; it is not a penalty for administrative lapses. A prosecution failure warrants refusal of an extension only where it has caused, or will cause, relevant delay in bringing the case to trial or has otherwise prolonged custody. Where the trial date was fixed beyond the custody time limit and the alleged failure had no effect on the trial date or the period of detention, the extension may properly be granted.

Three defendants awaiting trial for serious offences challenged the decision of HHJ Faulks to extend their custody time limits. The trial had been fixed for 5 January 2004, beyond the expiry of the custody time limits on 8 December 2003. The judge had released a fourth defendant, Bowron, after finding that the prosecution had failed to comply with an order for disclosure of a video and had therefore not acted with due diligence. He refused equivalent applications by the claimants because the disclosure failure did not relate to their cases.

The claimants argued that the prosecution’s lack of due diligence affected all defendants facing the same trial. The central issue was whether the alleged failure had caused relevant delay or had prolonged the claimants’ detention for the purposes of section 22(3) of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985.

1. The applications for judicial review failed. The court held that the prosecution’s alleged failures had not caused any delay to the holding of the trial or prolonged the claimants’ custody.
2. Section 22(3) of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 permits extension of a custody time limit only where there is good and sufficient cause and the prosecution has acted with all due expedition. The two requirements are linked.
3. Following the approach in R v Manchester Crown Court ex parte McDonald [1999] 1 WLR 841 and R v Leeds Crown Court ex parte Quereshi and others, the purpose of the due-expedition requirement is to prevent unjustified detention, not to punish prosecutors for administrative lapses.
4. Where a trial date is fixed beyond the custody time limit, the prosecution has no licence to delay. However, an extension will be refused for lack of due diligence only where the delay affects readiness for trial, causes an adjournment, or otherwise results in detention beyond the period which is justifiable.
5. The court rejected the claimants’ submission that a hypothetical trial date before expiry of the custody time limit should be inferred. The actual trial date had been fixed before the disclosure order, and the disclosure issue had no effect on it. The judge’s decision to release Bowron was itself considered erroneous, but the claimants’ applications nevertheless failed because no relevant prosecution failure had caused them to remain in custody longer than the law permitted.

The judgment describes a judicial review challenge to rulings by HHJ Faulks extending the claimants’ custody time limits. The Administrative Court granted permission and dealt with the matter as a full hearing. The applications were dismissed.