A challenge, by way of judicial review, by a young offender convicted of the murder and rape of a 14-year-old girl, to an excepting direction which discharged a reporting restriction order imposed under the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 s.45(3), was refused.
The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission had no standing to seek a declaration that abortion law in Northern Ireland was incompatible with ECHR art.3 and art.8 because it had not instituted proceedings by identifying any unlawful act or any actual or potential victim. Although the Supreme Court therefore had no jurisdiction to make a declaration […]
A district judge had failed to appreciate when deciding to retain jurisdiction to prosecute a young offender in the youth court for child sex offences that an amendment to the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000 s.3B introduced by the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 s.53 was not in force when he made […]
A judge had been wrong to commit a child for trial in the Crown Court for a sexual offence because, taking into account the child’s previous good character and the fact that he was 11 years old at the time of the offence, there was no real prospect that the Crown Court would exercise its […]
The Court of Appeal of Northern Ireland did not have jurisdiction to hear a purported appeal under the Criminal Appeal (Northern Ireland) Act 1980 against the lifting of reporting restrictions following a young offender’s conviction for serious sexual offences as the order had not been made on conviction as was required by s.8. The interim […]
The court declined to re-open a Court of Appeal decision that a judge had erred in granting, pre-trial, a stay of criminal proceedings relating to historic sexual abuse charges. The defendant had not appealed against the decision but sought to challenge it on the basis that it had been overtaken by subsequent authority. The court […]
A Crown Court judge presiding over a retrial had been wrong to designate a pre-trial hearing as a preparatory hearing, and so the Court of Appeal lacked jurisdiction to hear the defendants’ interlocutory appeal against his ruling that the complainant’s police interview and cross-examination at the original trial could be admitted as hearsay evidence at […]
It had not been reasonably open to a district judge to exercise his power of committal to the Crown Court for sentence under the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000 s.3C in respect of an 11-year-old boy who had pleaded guilty to child sex offences. Having accepted jurisdiction prior to the guilty pleas, further […]
A finding that a defendant did not pose a risk of serious harm to the public within the meaning of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 s.229 did not preclude the court from imposing a sexual offences prevention order under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 s.104 on that defendant.
