The Supreme Court has ruled that the Court of Criminal Appeal (CCA) is the appropriate court to consider revoking a suspended sentence that it imposed after quashing a trial court’s sentence and substituting a new one.
In a judgment delivered on 23 January 2014, Chief Justice Denham answered a certified question in the affirmative. The appeal concerned jurisdiction under section 99 of the Criminal Justice Act 2006, as amended. The Court adopted and affirmed the CCA’s earlier decision on that issue.
The case arose after the Director of Public Prosecutions appealed a sentence as unduly lenient. In April 2007, the CCA quashed the original sentence and imposed a new sentence of eight years’ imprisonment, consecutive to a 12-month term for another offence. It suspended five years of the eight-year sentence on the conditions set by the Circuit Court.
The judgment states that the appellant later committed further offences in breach of the suspension conditions. The DPP applied to the CCA to have the suspended term revoked. The appellant challenged whether the CCA, rather than the original sentencing court, had authority to hear that application.
The CCA ruled in October 2011 that it had jurisdiction. In November 2012, it separately revoked the suspension and activated the full five-year term, but the Supreme Court judgment notes that the CCA’s powers to revoke were not at issue on that date. The appeal before the Supreme Court concerned the earlier jurisdiction ruling, not whether the five-year term should be activated.
The appellant argued that the CCA’s role was appellate and ended once it had decided the sentence appeal. The DPP argued that legislation gave the CCA power to quash the trial court’s sentence and impose a replacement sentence, making it the court that imposed the suspended term.
The Supreme Court held that the 1993 legislation gave the CCA express power to quash the original sentence and impose a new one. It said the earlier decision in *The People (AG) v Grimes* no longer applied because it concerned a different statutory framework. The Court also rejected arguments based on the statutory right of appeal against revocation and alleged unequal treatment between different kinds of sentence appeals, finding neither changed the interpretation of section 99.
The ruling settles which court may consider revocation in these circumstances. It did not reconsider the merits of the 2012 activation decision.