R v Mane

For graduated-fee purposes, successive electronic versions of an indictment will ordinarily be treated as amendments to one indictment, rather than separate cases attracting separate fees. The question is one of fact and degree. A separate fee may arise where a genuinely separate indictment is created, but changes which clarify, correct or improve the drafting of the prosecution case will generally remain amendments. The court must examine whether the defendant faced a distinct prosecution or merely an amended formulation of the same case.

Counsel appealed under regulation 29 of the Criminal Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013 against a determining officer’s refusal to pay a further cracked trial fee. The defendant had initially been charged under one electronic indictment, followed by revised versions correcting his name and expanding the particulars of the alleged stalking. The earlier versions were stayed and the final version proceeded to trial.

The central issue was whether the successive versions constituted separate indictments, each giving rise to a separate graduated fee, or amendments to a single indictment.

1. The appeal was dismissed. The determining officer had correctly refused the claim for a further payment.

2. Under Schedule 1 paragraph 1(1) of the Criminal Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013, a case is defined by the assisted person facing one or more counts of a single indictment. A separate fee may therefore arise where an indictment is severed or a genuinely separate indictment requires separate procedural treatment.

3. Successive versions uploaded to the Digital Case System do not automatically constitute separate indictments. Whether a revised version is an amendment or a separate case is a matter of fact and degree. Corrections to a defendant’s name, changes in drafting and clarification of the prosecution case will ordinarily be amendments.

4. The material question is whether the defendant faced a prosecution which remained separately capable of proceeding, or whether the later document simply replaced and improved the earlier formulation of the same prosecution. The terminology used to describe the process, such as housekeeping or tidying up, is not determinative.

5. Here, the correction of the defendant’s name was plainly an amendment. The additional particulars in the final indictment clarified instances of conduct already apparent from the prosecution evidence. They did not establish a clear difference in the nature or extent of the charge. The absence of further prosecution evidence and the continuation of the same stalking allegation supported that conclusion.

6. The later addition of a summary stalking count during the trial illustrated the modern practice of amending an indictment as necessary to reflect the criminality alleged, without necessarily creating a separate indictable case or a further fee.

• High Court (Senior Court Costs Office): appeal under regulation 29 of the Criminal Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013 dismissed.
• Determining officer: refused the claim for a further cracked trial fee.