Error letter did not bar Crown from prosecuting

Letter referring to wrong case did not abandon proceedings, appeal court rules

News, 16 November 2005

A letter sent in error to the wrong accused, saying the Crown did not intend to take further proceedings in the case, did not bar the Crown from prosecuting, the appeal court ruled today.

The court allowed a Crown appeal from Sheriff Ruth Anderson at Dumbarton Sheriff Court, who ruled that a letter sent to Robert Weir after he had appeared on petition in connection with drugs and firearms offences, prevented the Crown from taking the case further.

The mistake happened when a clerk in the procurator fiscal's office confused the reference number of Weir's case with another in which the fiscal proposed to take no further action.

Weir's solicitor advocate argued that his client was entitled to take the letter at face value and four months had passed before the Crown had taken any further steps in his case.

However the Lord Justice Clerk, Lord Gill, sitting with Lord Kingarth and Lord Wheatley, ruled that the sheriff should not have looked at the letter alone. He continued:

"She failed to deal with the logically prior question whether, at the date of the letter, there was a decision to be intimated. In our consideration of the case we are not confined to an analysis of the letter itself. We have to consider the whole background circumstances... Although the clerk had a general authority to issue letters of this nature, that authority could be exercised only when a decision not to prosecute had been made by or on behalf of the Lord Advocate. Since no such decision had been made, the writer of the letter had no authority to send it. Therefore it could not bind the Crown."

The court's decision can be read at http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/opinions/2005HCJAC122.html .