The appellant was granted leave to move for an order of certiorari to quash the decision of the quarter sessions and the Court of Criminal Appeal then sat as a Divisional Court to hear the motion. Quarter sessions had no jurisdiction to commit an offender to themselves for sentence. s31 of the 1879 Act provided ‘quarter sessions may by their order . . vary the decision of the court of summary jurisdiction or may make such other order in the matter as they think just and by such order exercise any power which the court of summary jurisdiction might have exercised.’ The appellant had been sentenced to 3 months’ imprisonment at Marlborough Street Magistrates’ Court. He appealed to the County of London Sessions and having dismissed his appeal against conviction the quarter session purported to exercise the powers of committal which the magistrate would have had. They then sentenced the appellant to 12 months’ imprisonment.
Held: Lord Parker CJ said: ‘It immediately strikes one as highly artificial that a court can commit a person for sentence to itself the essence of committing being a committal by one court to another, from a court of lower jurisdiction to a court of higher jurisdiction. It is also to be observed that if the course taken by the London Sessions is right, Parliament has here provided in effect a double appeal on sentence.’
Lord Parker CJ
[1964] 1 QB 481
Summary Jurisdiction Act 1879 31
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Ashton , Regina v; Regina v Draz; Regina v O’Reilly CACD 5-Apr-2006
The court considered three appeals where there had been a procedural irregularity, and where the judge had taken some step to overcome that irregularity. In two cases the Crown Court judge had reconstituted himself as a district judge to correct a . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Updated: 05 September 2021; Ref: scu.240433