A Crown court judge who claimed he was subjected to ‘improper pressure’ over his handling of an application to extend custody time limits at the height of the pandemic has been given formal advice for misconduct.
Judge Keith Raynor refused to extend the custody time limit in the case of a man facing trial on drugs charges who had been held on remand for nearly a year, accusing the government in September 2020 of ‘systemic failure’ for not conducting jury trials in a reasonable time.
He said that the lack of available courtrooms to hear jury trials and the ‘lack of money provided by parliament to provide sufficient space for trials to be conducted’ did not provide a good reason to extend the custody time limit.
Raynor also claimed that the senior judge at Woolwich Crown Court, Judge Christopher Kinch QC, subjected him to ‘improper and undue influence’ over his decision.
He was later overruled by the High Court which said that there were ‘deep practical problems’ with restarting jury trials which needed to be overcome. Lord Burnett and Lord Justice Holroyde said: ‘The problem was not lack of funding nor systemic failure.’
Raynor has now been issued with formal advice for misconduct after he ‘emailed several people, including a journalist, to allege that he had been subjected to improper pressure’, the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office (JCIO) said.
‘A thorough investigation found no evidence to support this allegation,’ the JCIO added. ‘In deciding on an appropriate sanction, the lord chancellor and lord chief justice took into account Judge Raynor’s long and previously unblemished conduct record.’
