On 18 July 2024 the Privy Council gave judgment in DPP v Durham [2024] UKPC 21.  In her important and comprehensive judgment Chief Justice Lady Carr, effectively, eliminated any prospect of criminal defendants using judicial review to quash an impending criminal prosecution.

Background

In Durham the prosecution case relied entirely on the evidence of an eyewitness to the shootings, Mr Benjamin. He gave detailed evidence in preliminary committal proceedings in 2009 incriminating the three defendants (whom he said that he knew and had seen with firearms at the time of and near the shootings).  As a result the defendant were committed for trial and remanded in custody for over 10 years- since murder suspects had no right to bail until the Privy Council reversed that long standing principle in A-G of Trinidad and Tobago v Charles (No 2) [2022] UKPC 31.  

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