The court has discretion to permit a defendant a change of election for trial. Devlin J said: ‘I do not think that means that once the procedure is set in motion, the court has ineluctably to allow the wheels to revolve without any power to stop them if the accused wants to change his mind. I think it means no more than this, that if the summary trial is to be proceeded with in the way in which section 19 provides, those are the steps that must be taken, but I can find nothing in the words of subsection (5) which would deprive a magistrate or any court of the ordinary right which they must have in the interests of justice of allowing an accused who has given his consent ill- advisedly to abandoning his right to a trial by jury, to be given the opportunity of reconsidering it.’
Judges:
Devlin J
Citations:
[1957] 2 QB 591
Statutes:
Magistartes Court Act 1952 19(5)
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Aryan v Department of Public Prosecutions Admn 13-Jan-2004
The defendant appealed against a refusal by the magistrates to allow him to re-open his mode of trial hearing so as to allow him to elect trial at the Crown Court. She was Iranian and non-English speaker, though with a translator. The magistrates . .
Applied – Regina v Southampton Justices, ex parte Briggs QBD 1972
Lord Widgery CJ, with whom Ashworth and Griffiths JJ agreed, stated that, in determining a request by a defendant to withdraw consent to summary jurisdiction, the justices should exercise their jurisdiction ‘on how they see the broad justice of the . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Magistrates
Updated: 13 May 2022; Ref: scu.190498