CriminalEvidence - district judge ordering non-disclosure to defence on grounds of public interest immunity - no unfairness in district judge conducting trialR (Director of Public Prosecutions) v Acton Youth Court: DC (Lord Woolf CJ and Mr Justice Bell): 22 May 2001A defendant was charged with possession of a class B drug.

On an ex parte public interest immunity application by the prosecution, the district judge ordered that certain material should not be disclosed to the defence.

The district judge then disqualified himself from conducting the defendant's trial on the ground that to do so would appear to deny the defendant trial by an impartial tribunal, in breach of article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, as scheduled to the Human Rights Act 1998.

The Director of Public Prosecutions sought judicial review of that decision.John McGuinness QC (instructed by the Crown Prosecution Service, Ealing) for the DPP.

Stuart Trimmer (instructed by Farrell Matthews & Weir) for the defendant.

Hugo Keith (instructed by Treasury Solicitor) as amicus curiae.Held, allowing the application but making no order, that the judge who conducted a trial - whether a lay justice, a district judge or a judge of the Crown Court or High Court - had final responsibility for ensuring justice at that trial; that, where there had been an ex parte application for non-disclosure on the ground of public interest immunity, justice could best be achieved by the same tribunal conducting the subsequent trial since, if anything unforeseen then occurred, it would be in a position to protect the defendant; that, unless there were special circumstances, the fact that justices and district judges were judges of both fact and law should not prevent them from conducting a trial after they had made an interlocutory ruling; that, in general, article 6 of the convention merely reflected the long-established obligation to provide a fair trial; and that, accordingly, the district judge should not have concluded that the convention prevented him from conducting the defendant's trial (WLR).