Statistical Bulletin: Crime and Justice Series: Criminal Appeal Statistics, Scotland: 2008-09

6 Notes

1. Any person convicted of a criminal offence in Scotland by a court of first instance may appeal to the High Court of Justiciary sitting as the court of criminal appeal, usually subject to the granting of leave to appeal. Convicted persons may appeal against their conviction; against sentence; or against both conviction and sentence.

2. Applications for leave to appeal are considered first by a judge of the High Court, who decides whether the papers produced disclose arguable grounds of appeal (a procedure generally known as the "first sift"). If leave to appeal is refused the convicted person may apply to the High Court for leave to appeal. This involves a reconsideration of the papers by, two (in sentence appeals) or three judges (conviction appeals), who must once again decide whether the papers disclose arguable grounds of appeal.

3. The Lord Advocate has a right to appeal against a sentence on grounds of undue leniency. The Lord Advocate may also refer a point of law which has arisen in relation to a solemn case for the opinion of the High Court (although this procedure does not affect any acquittal or conviction in the case concerned).

4. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission ( SCCRC) was established on 1 April 1999 to review and investigate cases of alleged miscarriage of justice in Scotland. Where the Commission believes, after proper investigation, that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred, and that it is in the interests of justice to do so, it may refer a case to the High Court for review. Once a case is referred, the High Court will determine the case as if it was a normal appeal.

5. The year in which an appeal is counted is the year in which it was concluded. This is not necessarily the same as the year in which the appeal was lodged, nor the year in which sentence was passed in the original court case. Incompetent appeals are excluded from the figures. Certain types of procedural appeal, such as those which are for an extension of time on an existing appeal, are not counted - only the existing appeal is counted.

6. For the purposes of these statistics, the duration of an appeal case is measured from the date it was initially registered to the date it was concluded. It should be noted that the duration of a criminal appeal case will, in part, depend upon the time it takes for the Crown, and an appellant, to prepare their case. An appeal hearing date will not generally be allocated until both parties are ready to proceed. It should also be noted that the average (mean) duration can be affected by unusually long appeals (outliers).

7. Trends over recent years in the number and average duration of concluded criminal appeals have been influenced by a number of factors. A judicial direction in September 2002 meant that priority was given to dealing with solemn conviction appeals. The amount of court time allocated with dealing with that class of appeal was therefore increased from 19 court weeks in 2001 to 26 in 2002. With the demands of trial and civil court business on judicial time, and efforts to conclude longstanding appeal cases, this resulted in delays and backlogs in dealing with other types of criminal appeals business. Additional resources in the form of temporary judges were, however, made available in January 2004 to help deal with the backlog of appeals.

8. The statistics published in this Statistics Release are derived from information provided by the High Court of Justiciary. They reflect the information as held at 03 September 2009. Any revisions to the data will be reported in future Statistics Releases.

9. The statistics for January 2003 onwards were derived from an electronic data extract from the High Court of Justiciary's appeals case management system. This method of data collection replaced the set of manually completed paper returns used to collect the data for previous years. While this new method of data collection is believed to be inherently more accurate than the previous one, the change to it may have resulted in a slight discontinuity between the figures for 2003-04 and those for earlier years.

10. A Justice of the Peace Court is a lay court where a Justice of the Peace who is not legally qualified sits with a legally qualified Clerk. The Clerk provides advice to the Justices on matters of law and procedure. Justice of the Peace Courts have been created by the Criminal Proceedings etc (Reform) (Scotland) Act 2007 and are administered by the Scottish Court Service. As each Sheriffdom undergoes the unification process, District Courts will be replaced by Justice of the Peace Courts.

11. This Statistics Release may be viewed on the Scottish Government Internet Web site: www.scotland.gov.uk/stats/bulletins/00771.