| JUSTICES — Information — Whether validly laid — Dispute between householders — Alleged offensive behaviour by one party — Third party uninvolved in dispute and unaffected by offensive behaviour bringing private prosecution — District judge finding no issues of public interest and no jurisdiction to hear informations — Whether non-aggrieved private prosecutor having to establish public interest — Whether individual other than aggrieved entitled to bring private prosecution — Whether informations validly laid — Prosecution of Offences Act 1985, s 6(1)
Ewing v Davis
QBD: Mitting J: 2 July 2007
Public interest in a private prosecution was established by the nature of the alleged offence as defined in statute not by the circumstances leading up to its alleged commission.
Mitting J so held in the Queen’s Bench Division when allowing the appeal by way of case stated of a private prosecutor, Terence Patrick Ewing, against the decision of District Judge Roger Ede sitting in Hastings Magistrates’ Court of 13 September 2006 that the court had no jurisdiction to hear the informations preferred against the defendant, Kenneth George Davis, on the ground that they did not raise any issue of public interest but arose out of purely private grievances involving the defendant and a neighbour, Christopher Hayward.
The prosecutor had laid four informations against the defendant alleging the use of threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour towards Mr Hayward under ss4(1)(a), 4A (as inserted by the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, s154) and 5(1)(a) of the Public Order Act 1986, and conduct amounting to harassment of Mr Hayward under ss1(1) and 2 of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. The district judge held that the private prosecutor was a third party, that the offences did not concern a matter of public interest and benefit, and that the only person who had locus standi to prosecute the informations was the aggrieved party. The questions on which the opinion of the court was sought were whether (1) the district judge had been correct to conclude as a matter of law that a private prosecutor, who was not the aggrieved, had to establish a public interest in criminal proceedings; and (2) whether the decision of fact made by the district judge, that the offences alleged concerned only an individual grievance and did not establish a public interest and benefit, was one which could reasonably have been made on the fact of the case.
MITTING J said that historically there never had been a requirement that a private prosecutor had to show a public interest where the prosecution was made under a public and general Act. This power had not been fettered by modern statute. S 6(1) of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 neither qualified nor extended existing rights. Public interest in a private prosecution was established by the nature of the offence as defined in statute not the circumstances leading up to it. Since the private prosecutors’ informations had been laid under a public and general Act they had been properly laid and should proceed to a hearing.
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