The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is being criticised for pursuing certain cases, such as the one involving former Commons Deputy Speaker Nigel Evans, to the extent that there have been calls for the Attorney General to open an urgent review of its approach to them and to address the other problems it is perceived to have.
A former criminal defence lawyer, who has chosen to remain anonymous, wrote a lengthy piece in the Telegraph earlier this year to outline what she sees as the failings of the CPS and the justice system in general.
Writing under the pseudonym Emily Thorne, the article states that the heart of the problem is in the CPS’s resources, or lack of them, meaning that cases are not being properly reviewed before going to court.
The fallout from this is that there are often unnecessary court hearings and defendants can remain in custody unnecessarily. Moreover, given this lack of resources, cases can be pursued unnecessarily, only to be dropped when they are looked at properly at a later stage, as happened in the case of Nigel Evans.
The MP for Ribble Valley described the case against him as a ‘witch hunt’ and spoke, after he was found not guilty on rape and sexual assault charges, of the cost to his emotional and financial wellbeing of the case being pursued when a review earlier on would almost certainly have led to it being dropped.
Meanwhile, another of ‘Ms Thorne’s’ concerns is the pressure prosecutors appear to be under to proceed with certain types of offences, regardless of the strength of evidence or the public interest that would served by keeping them going.
The article concludes by saying that the stringent tests that are already in existence for the CPS, both in terms of the standard of evidence and prosecution being in the public interest, are not being applied properly, which is why she is calling for a review.