CRIMINAL LAW

Fitness to plead - statutory procedure - not incompatible with Convention right to fair trialR v M; R v Kerr; R v H: CA (Rose LJ, Bell and Stanley Burnton JJ): 5 October 2001In each case, a jury having found the defendant unfit to plead to various charges pursuant to section 4 of the Criminal Procedure (Insanity) Act 1964, defence counsel submitted that subsequent proceedings under section 4A (as inserted by the Criminal Procedure (Insanity and Unfitness to Plead) Act 1991), to determine whether the accused did the act charged, were incompatible with article 6 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and were an abuse of process.

Those submissions were rejected.

In two of the cases different juries in section 4A proceedings found that the defendants had done the act alleged; one defendant sought leave to appeal and the other appealed against conviction.

In the third case the defendant sought leave for an interlocutory appeal against the ruling.Sherry Nabijou (instructed by John D Sellars & Co, Sutton) for M.

John Lofthouse (instructed by Crown Prosecution Service, Eastleigh) for the Crown in M's case.

Robert Smith QC and Jonathan Rose (instructed by Walker Morris, Leeds) for Kerr.

Paul Worsley QC and Sharon Beattie (instructed by Crown Prosecution Service, Leeds) for the Crown in Kerr's case.

Richard Wright (assigned by the Registrar of Criminal Appeals) for H.

Paul Worsley QC (instructed by Crown Prosecution Service, Leeds) for the Crown in H's case.Held, refusing the applications and dismissing the appeal, that the criminal charge provisions of article 6 did not apply to proceedings under sections 4 and 4A since they could not result in a conviction and did not involved a penalty being imposed upon the accused; that, even if article 6 were to apply, proceedings under section 4A would not be incompatible with it; that a person under a mental disability, whose condition did not prevent him being fit to plead to a criminal charge, might be disadvantaged but provided that disadvantage was minimised a trial could be fair; that, accordingly, an accused's disability, or matters related to it, could not therefore in itself give rise to an abuse of process; and that there was no provision for an interlocutory appeal against such a ruling.