Court acquittals (FOI)

​Request

I would like details of the cost to the States of Jersey in pursuing failed prosecutions.

A

In particular I would like to know:

     1. the court costs incurred by acquittals

     2. the amounts awarded for acquitted defendants costs

     3. details of any other marginal costs incurred to the island in pursuing a failed prosecution

B

I would like any analysis to cover the last five years and in respect of 2015 to detail the split of prosecutions between the former Attorney General (AG), Mr Timothy Le Cocq QC, and the current AG Mr Robert MacRae QC.

C

I would also like to know over the same period the percentage of total contested cases that were taken to trial by the AG that failed.

If it is not possible to provide the information requested due to the information exceeding the cost of compliance limits please provide advice and assistance as to how I can refine my request to be included.

Response

It should be noted that the Law Officers’ Department is not scheduled under the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 (FOI Law) and therefore relevant information they may hold is not accessible through a request under the Law.

The costs information we hold at the Judicial Greffe, which is scheduled under the Law, is contained in documents either filed with the court or created by members of the administrative staff of the court in proceedings in a particular cause or matter and is therefore absolutely exempt under Article 24(1) or 24(2) of the FOI Law and we may refuse to supply such information we hold.

We do provide statistics for activity in the Magistrate’s Court and the Royal Court are published in Statistical Digest appendices to the Court Service Annual Report each year. The Annual Reports may be found on the www.gov.je website on the ‘Judicial Greffe reports and documents page’ at the following address:

Judicial Greffe reports and documents

In the interests of openness relating to the expenditure of public money, in this instance we are able to provide some additional information and explanation which follows.

A and C

A (1) and (3). We do not maintain financial accounts broken down by whether a case resulted in an acquittal or not. This means any such cost figures would necessarily be estimates. It would be a matter for discussion, analysis and estimation what proportion of each figure from our accounts could be assigned to any particular case. We have not made any such analysis nor do we hold any such estimates and therefore our records hold no information in response to these parts of the request.

A (2) and C. We have collated information held relating to costs paid from public funds to defendants who have gone to trial and been found not guilty for cases where they were first presented for indictment at the Royal Court in the last five years. This is presented in the table in the attached pdf file. It should be noted that not all cases received at court in 2016 have been completed and only one relevant application for costs has been received to date. Note that this does not include information for cases tried by the Magistrate’s Court.

B

We refuse to supply any information held relating to who might have been involved in decisions to prosecute; this information is only held in documents filed with the court in proceedings in a particular cause or matter and is therefore absolutely exempt information under Article 24(1) of the FOI Law.

Exemption applied

Article 24 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 - Court information

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it is held by a scheduled public authority only by virtue of being contained in a document –

(a) filed with, or otherwise placed in the custody of, a court; or

(b) served upon, or by, the scheduled public authority,

in proceedings in a particular cause or matter.

(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if it is held by a scheduled public authority only by virtue of being contained in a document created by –

(a) a court; or

(b) a member of the administrative staff of a court,

in proceedings in a particular cause or matter.

(3) Information is absolutely exempt information if it is held by a scheduled public authority only by virtue of being contained in a document –

(a) placed in the custody of; or

(b) created by,

a person conducting an inquiry or arbitration, for the purposes of the inquiry or arbitration.

(4) In this Article –

“arbitration” means arbitration to which Part 2 of the Arbitration (Jersey) Law 1998 applies;

“court” includes any tribunal in which legal proceedings may be brought;

“inquiry” means an inquiry or a hearing held under an enactment;

“proceedings in a particular cause or matter” includes an inquest or post-mortem examination.