High Court affirms correct bail hearing forum
Once a diet has called on an indictment citing an accused to a preliminary hearing in the High Court, that court and not the sheriff is the appropriate court to decide any applications for bail, a new decision has confirmed.
Lord Justice General Carloway, sitting with Lords Brodie and Drummmond Young, so stated on a bail appeal by an accused, AA, charged with repeated rape. AA was a foreign national who had entered the UK illegally and was considered as at risk of absconding. Bail was refused in the sheriff court at first appearance and on full committal and not then appealed. After he was indicted, trial was fixed for July 2016 and the 140 day time bar extended. AA would by then have been in custody for 10 months.
More than three months after full committal, AA purported to appeal the refusal of bail at that stage to the Sheriff Appeal Court, which was refused, and then lodged a petition to the High Court and also a note of appeal from the Sheriff Appeal Court.
Lord Carloway said that once the preliminary hearing diet in the High Court had called, the appropriate court to decide any applications for bail was that court, which would be apprised of all the relevant information relative to the progress of the case, and it was therefore "not appropriate to revert to the sheriff" after that point. He concluded: "It follows that the procedure to appeal the original sheriff’s decision on bail, after the calling of the preliminary hearing, was inappropriate, as was also the procedure which has followed thereon. If an accused person wishes to seek bail upon a trial diet being fixed at a preliminary hearing, he should seek that from the preliminary hearing judge."