Criminal

Leave to appeal prosecution appealing to House of Lords application made out of time no jurisdiction to extend time R v Weir: HL (Lord Bingham...Leave to appeal prosecution appealing to House of Lords application made out of time no jurisdiction to extend time R v Weir: HL (Lord Bingham of Cornhill, Lord Hoffmann, Lord Hope of Craighead, Lord Clyde and Lord Hutton): 6 February 2001The Court of Appeal quashed the defendants convictions for murder, burglary and assault occasioning actual bodily harm on the grounds that the DNA evidence used to convict him had not been admissible pursuant to section 64 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 as it had been derived from a saliva sample which was required to have been destroyed.

The prosecutors application for leave to appeal to the House of Lords was lodged one day after expiry of the 14-day time limit laid down in section 34 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1968 and was rejected.

In a later decision, the House of Lords ruled that trial judges had a discretionary power to admit such evidence pursuant to section 78 of the 1984 Act: see Attorney Generals Reference (No 3 of 1999); [2001] 2 WLR 56).

The prosecution lodged a petition seeking leave to apply to the Lords for leave to appeal.David Perry and Duncan Penny (instructed by CPS, Casework Directorate) for the prosecution; Sir Derek Spencer QC and Rufus DCruz (instructed by Traymans) for the defendant.Held, refusing the petition, that the Lords had no right or power to modify the statute by which its powers were governed; that the construction of the statute was clear and unless a prosecutor applied for leave to appeal to the Lords within the period of 14 days the Lords was powerless to grant leave; that there was nothing in the language of article 6 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1953), or any other article, to suggest that it was directed in any way to the position of a prosecutor; that, in truth, the situation did not engage the human rights of the prosecutor at all and it would be to stand the convention on its head to interpret it as strengthening the rights of prosecutors against private citizens; that accordingly the Lords had to apply the law as laid down by Parliament, and nothing in the human rights legislation entitled the Lords to depart from the clear language of the statute, which did not in any way offend against the convention.

(WLR)