The Summary Justice Review Committee: REPORT TO MINISTERS
Chapter 24: TRIAL COURTS
Agreement of Pleas
24.1 The latest date, in most cases, on which there should be negotiations between the Crown and the defence to agree a plea is the day of the intermediate diet. At present many pleas are tendered after that time. It was suggested to us that the court should refuse to entertain pleas of guilty other than as charged on the day of trial. We think that that goes too far. We recognise that in some cases, especially those where witnesses are spared giving harrowing evidence, a guilty plea, or a plea to parts of the complaint, even on the day of the trial, will be welcome. An agreed plea should therefore be accepted by the court on the day of the trial but there should be no adjournments on that day prior to a trial starting to see if a plea can be agreed. If a practice of no negotiations after a trial court commenced were to become universal and known, and be firmly adhered to, any necessary negotiations would, we think, take place before trials are due to start.
Call-overs and Ancillary Business
24.2 What happens in many, if not most, courts at present is that the court will sit at, say, 10 a.m. or soon thereafter and call-over the trials (i.e. to determine whether the accused and all the witnesses are present and whether the trial is proceeding or not). This is commonly a symptom of too many trials being set down for trial courts. Once the call over has taken place the procurator fiscal will often seek an adjournment which will euphemistically, but usually inaccurately, be described as "short". The result often is that in courts where that practice is followed, the first trial may not commence until well after 11 a.m.
24.3 If there is to be the equivalent of a call-over and subsequent negotiation between the procurator fiscal and the defence, that should take place before the time at which the court is due to start. It is very unsatisfactory to have large numbers of witnesses turning up at court for a 10 a.m. start if the court does not sit to hear witnesses give evidence in a trial until much later in the morning. If there are to be pleas on the day, the court should deal with them before the time when the trials are due to start. Witnesses should be cited for the time when the court will start the first trial. They should not be cited to attend court for a time when the court knows that it is likely to be dealing with, for example, cases which are not going to trial that day because there is a plea. We recommend that, in courts in which it is considered to be necessary to have a call over, the court should commence much earlier for that purpose. Otherwise any trial court should convene at the time when it is due to start and should start the first trial then and there. The court should refuse all adjournments except of cases which it is already known will not, in the interests of justice, be able to commence at all that day. It may be necessary to reduce the number of summary trials set down for each court to achieve that. Although that could conceivably mean that some court rooms are not utilised to their full capacity, we are clear that there will be savings for others, such as witnesses, the cost of adjourned trials will reduce and it will achieve the earlier disposal of cases set down for trial that day.
24.4 Ancillary business, such as deferred sentences should not interfere with the commencement of trials at the scheduled time. If these are to be heard first, the court should sit earlier to deal with them, but in all circumstances should be ready to commence trials at the scheduled time and be able to continue until they are finished for the day. This may require adjustments to the programme in some courts.
Waiting Times for Victims and Witnesses
24.5 There was some support for the view that not all trials should be set down for the same starting time in the morning. Some might be set down for, say, 10 a.m. and others for 12 noon or 2 p.m. or both. In district courts it is easier to schedule trials at different times as they tend to be shorter than trials in the sheriff court, and many district courts do in fact schedule cases in this way. It inevitably happens that on some days the cases set down for the morning do not take place while the cases set down for later in the day do proceed, and sometimes spill over into another day. It is impossible to predict which cases will not go ahead on the day of trial in advance of the day of trial and not easy to calculate how long a trial is likely to take. We do not think that, given the varying caseloads and availability of courtroom resources, it is appropriate to recommend a single solution in terms of a court appointment system.
24.6 We do, however, recommend that courts be given targets, which would be monitored, for the time which elapses between the time when both accused and witnesses are required to arrive at court and the time at which the case in which accused are involved commences and, in the case of witnesses, the time when the witness is called to give evidence. The achievement of targets would be monitored on a sample basis which would be subject to periodic audit (a similar mechanism to that currently used in magistrates' courts in England and Wales). We consider that it is better that individual courts experiment with different court programmes to see what works best in that court to achieve optimum efficiency. We emphasise, however, that an essential component in the achievement of optimum efficiency is not just the maximum use of the court room or the judge's time, but also it is the need to cut waiting times for witnesses, accused and solicitors during the trial day to a minimum. We recommend that courts should aim to require the attendance of witnesses at court no more than an hour on average before they are required to give evidence. Our proposals are designed to reduce the numbers of cases going to trial and the numbers of witnesses cited to trial. Courts in future should take account of the need to minimise costs and inconvenience for witnesses, solicitors and others as well as factors such as the numbers of hours which courts sit in assessing their own efficiency.
24.7 In larger courts experiments which have involved having a back-up court, judge, prosecutor and clerk appear to have been successful. The back-up team takes trials as soon as it becomes clear that more cases are going to trial than the trial courts can deal with that day. Knowledge that the trial will proceed that day concentrates the minds of both prosecution and defence in a way which does not always happen at present. Adjournment of trials on the day of the trial should become exceptional. There should be a requirement to minute the true reasons for any such adjournment.
We recommend that individual courts experiment with different court programmes to see what works best in that court to achieve optimum efficiency. Optimum efficiency must take account of the needs of all court users, including victims and witnesses.
We recommend that there should be no call-over of trials (i.e. to determine whether the accused and witnesses are present and whether the trial will proceed) after the time when the first trial is due to start and that there should be no adjournments after that time to discuss pleas in cases in which the trial has not commenced. If there is to be a call-over, the court should sit earlier for that purpose.
We recommend that the first trial should start when it is due to start and that the court should refuse all adjournments except of trials which cannot, in the interests of justice, commence at all.
We recommend that courts be given targets for the time which elapses between the time when both accused and witnesses are required to arrive at court and the time at which the case in which accused are involved commences and, in the cases of witnesses, the time when the witness gives evidence. We recommend that courts should aim to require the attendance of witnesses at court no more than an hour or so on average before they are required to give evidence.