Stone v Clerk To the Justices, Plymouth Magistrates' Court

1. LORD JUSTICE LATHAM: This is an application for judicial review of a decision of the 21 February 2007, when the applicant was committed at the Plymouth Magistrates' Court to 344 days' imprisonment in relation to an outstanding sum of £25,719.43, which remained to be paid in relation to a confiscation order which had been made as long ago as 26 October 1994. That was made as a result of his conviction on 6 May 1994 at Plymouth Crown Court on drug trafficking charges. He was sentenced to a total of seven years and four months' imprisonment. The total confiscation order was is £83,000.

2. He was released from prison at the latest in 1998, and between 2002 and the order that was made this year, there were desultory proceedings during which the prosecution authorities sought to obtain further sums in relation to the confiscation order. Those culminated in the order ultimately made in relation to which this application for judicial review is made.

3. We have no doubt that the delay overall in this case means that the applicant's rights under Article 6(1) have been breached, and, as indicated by this court in the case of Crowther [2005] ECHR 53741/00, which in fact essentially approved what this court had held in Lloyd v Bow Street Magistrates' Court [2003] EWHC 2294 (Admin) , the appropriate order is for the committal to be quashed, and we accordingly do so.

4. The only other order that we are asked to make is in relation to unfunded costs, and we order that those should be paid after assessment out of central funds.

5. MR JUSTICE SAUNDERS: I agree.