Crown courts have returned to ‘business as normal’ after the pandemic, a senior judge has said in allowing a challenge to the extension of the custody time limit (CTL) in a case of alleged domestic violence.
Lee Marten, who faces charges of assault by beating of his previous partner, possession of a bladed instrument, perverting the course of justice and criminal damage, brought a judicial review of the decision to extend the CTL by nearly six months due to problems with ‘court availability’.
His trial was due to begin at Lincoln Crown Court in March but could not be heard and Judge Simon Hirst, who said that ‘there is no prospect at all of this case getting on any sooner anywhere else’, extended the CTL until mid-September.
Marten argued that the Crown Prosecution Service could not show that the need for an extension was due to a ‘good and sufficient reason’ and the High Court today granted his application for judicial review, remitting the matter to Lincoln Crown Court.
Lady Justice Macur said in her judgment: ‘The physical restrictions upon the conduct of Crown court trials introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic are no longer necessary, but the backlog of cases awaiting trial is, and will be for some considerable time, extensive.’
She said the CPS ‘implicitly seek to pray in aid that the continuing impact of the pandemic, which is said to be a major contributory factor in the backlog and therefore as a cause of significant delay, reduces the level of investigation necessary into whether a good reason [to extend the CTL] is also a sufficient reason’, an argument she rejected.
The judge noted that a temporary increase to CTLs expired last June, saying: ‘There has been no attempt to persuade parliament to extend them again. This supports the view that it is “business as normal” and possible to identify those cases which will constitute the “routine” criminal trial.’
She added: ‘The judiciary and court staff are making Herculean efforts to address the backlog and, as was [the judge] in this case, often fielding applications in the midst of ongoing trials. Consequently, we recognise that efforts may be made to trim the procedure that should be followed, but equally understand why these attempts may result in such a challenge as this.’
Macur recommended that judges considering applications to extend CTLs should regularly update the Crown court’s resident judge and state any information provided by listing officers in open court. ‘Prosecution and defence advocates need to be adequately informed to advance their submissions so to assist the court in the necessary rigorous scrutiny of good and sufficient reason,’ she said.
