Application for certiorari to quash a decision of the Whitehaven Magistrates’ Court to commit the applicant for trial to the Crown Court on two charges: the first, conspiring to supply heroin between December 1996 and July 1997; and the second, supplying heroin. A submission of no case was rejected.
Held: The request was refused: ‘the old-style committal proceedings were spread over no less than five days. Five witnesses, including Brassington, gave oral evidence and were cross-examined. Numerous witness statements were read. In her affidavit the magistrate makes it plain that she carried out a careful analysis and evaluation of the evidence that was led before her. Mr Latif commented on each individual item of evidence. He submitted that in itself each item did not support the existence of a conspiracy. It is not surprising that, looked at in isolation, each item did not support the count of conspiracy. But the magistrate was not looking at each item in isolation; she was looking at the cumulative effect of all the pieces of evidence that she identified in her affidavit. It is conceded that she was right to look at the evidence on that cumulative basis and to see whether a number of perhaps small indications when looked at in their own right, were sufficient in aggregate to mean that the applicant had a case to answer.
She having done that, having heard the witnesses, it is in practical terms quite impossible for this court, not having heard the evidence, to say that her decision was Wednesbury perverse. It is plain from the two authorities which I have cited that it is an inappropriate use of judicial review to challenge committal proceedings on the basis of insufficiency of evidence, save in the very clearest of cases. ‘
Vice President of the Queens Bench Division,
(Lord Justice Kennedy )
,
An
Mr Justice Sullivan
[1998] EWHC Admin 940
Bailii
England and Wales
Citing:
Cited – Regina v Bedwellty Justices Ex Parte Williams HL 18-Sep-1996
A decision at committal to return an accused for trial is susceptible to judicial review where committal was based solely on inadmissible evidence or was based on evidence not reasonably capable of supporting it. The committal was quashed.
The . .
Cited – Neill v North Antrim Magistrates’ Court HL 1992
The question before the House was whether a committal was a nullity when the magistrate had received inadmissible evidence.
Held: Committal proceedings should only be judicially reviewed in cases of ‘really substantial error leading to . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Magistrates, Criminal Practice
Updated: 05 January 2022; Ref: scu.139061