A conviction warrant was founded on a conviction in absentia. It was common ground that Mr Rahman had had no notice of the proceedings leading to conviction and that the conviction could be set aside on his demand. The judge was referred to Campbell and Cousins and was invited by counsel for the appellant to look at the full period of the delay either on abuse of process grounds or on article 8 grounds. The judge said that he shared the reservations of Ouseley J about simply proceeding down the article 8 route as a catch-all where the central point the appellant wanted to make was the change of circumstances caused by the passage of time since the offence was first committed. Noting that the definition of ‘unlawfully at large’ in section 68A of the 2003 Act did not apply to section 14, he considered that it was necessary to give it a meaning which avoided the absurdity of effectively preventing the appellant from pleading delay at all. He concluded that: ‘. . in effect a person remains accused of a crime for the purposes of the oppression limb of section 14 unless or until there has been a conviction from which he was required to participate from which he has absconded himself and is therefore a fugitive from justice. Such an approach avoids having to shoehorn the present problem either into abuse of process questions, where there is a more rigorous test and a requirement generally of absence of good faith or simply leaving it to a factor in the article 8 balance.’
Blake J
[2014] EWHC 4143 (Admin)
Bailii
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Konecny v District Court In Brno-Venkov, Czech Republic SC 27-Feb-2019
K had been convicted and sentenced in his absence. His extradition was requested under an EAW which asserted that it was based upon an enforceable judgment, but that he had an unqualified right to be retried. He argued that the delay (since 2004 for . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Extradition
Updated: 11 January 2022; Ref: scu.542537
