The Practical Lawyer

An accused (A) must now give the court and prosecutor notice as to whether they intend to call another person as a witness as to fact or character at their trial under s34 CJA 2004. If so, A must provide the person’s name, address and date of birth and other relevant information that may help identify or find that person. Notice must be served in both the MC and the CC.

The offence of affray was restricted to the protection of a bystander from the fear of unlawful violence and not wider to cover every case of common assault.

A judge’s written reasons for sentencing should be read out in open court so that they are available to the defendant, the complainant, the jury and the public at large. Sentencing decisions and the reasons should not be announced behind closed doors.

Twomey seems likely to serve as a precedent for non-jury trials in future serious criminal cases. This useful article highlights the practical consequences of this important case for criminal practitioners.

An offence of violent disorder under s2 Public Order Act 1986 required that three or more persons present together means nothing more than that those three persons are in the same place at the same time.

There is no presumption or principle that costs follow the event in proceedings involving the detention and or forfeiture of cash in proceedings in magistrates’ court under the PCA. Further, over and above that, ordinarily no order shall be made against any prosecutor in cash detention or forfeiture cases.

D was not liable for murder where the common purpose was not to kill but to cause serious harm, if the direct cause of death was someone else’s deliberate act. But that act had to be of a kind unforeseen by D and probably more life-threatening than those intended or foreseen by D.

The new regime for the payment of advocates in relation to confiscation proceedings applies to all hearings on or after 21 August 2009. This follows on from cases that highlighted the difficulty in securing advocates prepared to act in complex confiscation cases under the Advocates Graduated Fees Scheme.

In appropriate circumstances the Crown can rely in whole or in part on hearsay evidence to establish its case. Such evidence must be demonstrably reliable and its reliability must be properly assessed and tested. Hearsay evidence is sometimes allowed when witnesses are unavailable through fear; but this is unlikely where the fear arose from inappropriate and alarmist statements by the police.

A number of recent cases have looked at the issue of ‘gateway’ (d) for the admission on evidence of bad character. Section 101 CJA 2003 allows the admission of bad character if relevant to an important matter at issue between the defence and prosecution. Bad character is further defined elsewhere in the Act, including whether D has a propensity to commit such offences, and D’s propensity to be untruthful. However, the list within the definition is not exhaustive and the use of the word ‘propensity’ to describe gateway (d) can be misleading.