Chris Huhne made his first appearance before a court yesterday, following the news earlier this month that the Crown Prosecution Service planned to bring charges against him and Vicky Pryce, his former wife, of perverting the course of justice.
Given the vague way in which matters of legal procedure are reported in the media, there now follows a bit more detail about the procedure of what will happen next and when we might expect the case to be resolved, for those not familiar with the details of the system.
The offence of perverting the course of justice is one which can only be tried in a Crown Court before a jury. However, all criminal cases begin at a Magistrates’ Court, which is why Huhne and Pryce appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court yesterday. All that happened on this occasion was that the charges were formally read, Huhne and Pryce were asked to confirm their names, ages and addresses and the judge then sent the case to Southwark Crown Court to proceed further.
One piece of information we did get as a result of yesterday’s hearing was the formal charge, which was read out to Huhne as follows:
Between 21 March 2003 and 21 May 2003, you intended to pervert the course of public justice, by doing an act in that you, during the course of an investigation into an offence of driving a vehicle in excess speed, you submitted information to the investigation officer that Vicky Pryce had been the driver, enabling her to admit responsibility for the offence and causing her licence to be endorsed with three penalty points.
The next court appearance will be on 2 March at the crown court. It’s not clear from the various media reports what type of hearing this will be (there are two options: a preliminary hearing or a plea and case management hearing), but it is more than likely that we will know after that hearing what pleas both Huhne and Pryce plan to enter.
If either or both plead not guilty, the court will then set a trial date. It is virtually impossible to say when this is likely to be – it depends, amongst other things, on the likely length of the trial, the busyness of the court and whether the court thinks this is a case that should expedited (because, for instance, it involves a sitting MP). The best estimate it’s possible to give is that the trial will probably take place in late summer/early autumn at the earliest.
* Nick Thornsby is a day editor at Lib Dem Voice.
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3 Comments
I don’t know the details of the Huhne case, but it seems to me that the state should have to choose between “this is important” therefore we are going to have the trial in the next three months and “this is not important” and therefore we are dropping it (and thereby moving forward all the later cases). A six-to-nine-month queuing system is not acceptable (for anyone, not just Chris Huhne).
From the media it seems that after the divorce Pryce wanted to “get” him, one wonders if she wanted to do a kamikaze on him, or she didn’t expect to be standing next to him in court at this point..
Is that a verbatim quote from the charge? Sheesh, they need a proofreader. “doing an act in that you … you permitted”? Is GCSE English not a requirement for working in the prosecution service?
What does a hearing like that cost? Does it contribute anything to the process of justice that couldn’t be done by, say, e-mail?