ABSTRACT
DC, as, at the end of the first day of the trial, a member of the bench of
justices had typed out a note of what he proposed the bench should say
at the end of the case if they were to find the case proved. In R v Ely
Justices ex p Burgess (1993) 157 JP 484, the DC quashed a conviction
of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and remitted the matter to the
justices for rehearing before a new bench as the prosecutor had
travelled with the justices and the clerk in a car to view the scene of the
alleged offence, and on the return journey, had travelled alone with the
justices. The justices had also refused to allow the defendant to be
present though his solicitor was present. In R v Gough [1993] AC 646,
the House of Lords propounded a new test to be applied in cases of
alleged bias. It substituted the real danger of bias test for the reasonable
suspicion test. Lord Goff set out the test as follows:
... the court should ask itself whether there was a real
danger of bias on the part of the relevant member of the
tribunal in question, in the sense that he might unfairly
regard (or have unfairly regarded) with favour, or
disfavour, the case of a party to the issue under
consideration by him; though in a case concerned with
bias on the part of a justices’ clerk, the court should go on
to consider whether the clerk has been invited to give the
justices advice and, if so, whether it should infer that
there was a real danger of the clerk’s bias having infected
the views of the justices adversely to the applicant.
