The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has launched a legal challenge after several judges released suspects on bail because delays caused by the barristers’ strike meant they had exceeded their custody time limits.
The CPS has been granted the right to have a judicial review of at least three cases where judges rejected an application by a prosecutor to extend the custody of suspects beyond the limit.
In one case the Recorder of Bristol, Judge Peter Blair QC, refused to extend custody time limits and granted bail to a defendant, saying “the state has had many months to resolve the current dispute.”
But custody time limits can be extended beyond that by a judge if the defendant or a key witness is ill, or for “some other good and sufficient cause” and if the “prosecution have acted with all due diligence and expedition.”
Several judges have ruled the refusal of a barrister to represent his client because he or she is on strike is not “sufficient and good cause” to deny the defendant the right to be released from prison on bail.
Among those was Judge Peter Blair KC, the recorder of Bristol Crown Court, who referred to “chronic underfunding” of the criminal justice system and said, “The state has had many many months in which to resolve the current dispute over the requisite level of remuneration to pay in order to attract the services of barristers to act on behalf of people benefiting from Representation Orders.”
