Description
Misusing an order for costs in an attempt to discipline the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Peter Barry Goodison, the driver of a bus, was prosecuted for an offence of causing death by careless driving. Mr Goodison was tried at the Crown Court at Sheffield and was acquitted. After the acquittal the trial Judge determined that the failure to prosecute another driver involved in the collision and the decision only to prosecute Mr Goodison were improper acts or omissions. The trial Judge therefore made an order that the Crown Prosecution Service should pay the costs incurred by Mr Goodison pursuant to the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985, s.19. The Director of Public Prosecutions sought to challenge the order by way of an application for judicial review.
The Queen's Bench Division quashed the order. After the acquittal the trial Judge told Prosecution Counsel he was considering making the Crown Prosecution Service pay the whole of the costs under s.19 on the basis that the failure to prosecute another driver was an unnecessary or improper act or omission. It is well-established that decisions made by the State to prosecute are decisions for prosecutors appointed by the State. When in the rarest of circumstances a challenge is made to the decision to prosecute, it should in general be made before the trial Court by way of an application to stay the case an as abuse of the process of the Court.
According, it follows that if a challenge is to be made to the decision to prosecute made by the Crown Prosecution Service or other State prosecutors it must be in the ways described. What a Judge has no jurisdiction to do is to use s.19 at the end of the trial as a means of impugning the prosecutorial discretion given to the Director of Public Prosecutions and other State prosecutors by imposing costs on such prosecutors. It is simply outwith the power under s.19. It is not the Judge's role to discipline the Director of Public Prosecutions for what he considers was an aberrant exercise of prosecutorial discretion.
