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Statistics Release
CRIMINAL APPEAL STATISTICS, SCOTLAND, 2003

31 January 2005

A Scottish Executive National Statistics Publication

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A total of just over 2,100 criminal appeals were concluded in the High Court of Justiciary in 2003, a decrease of 14 per cent compared with 2002 and the lowest figure recorded in the last decade, figures released today show.

Between 2002 and 2003, the number of completed appeals where the court of first instance was a Sheriff Solemn Court increased by 13 per cent to 414. The number of completed appeals where the court of first instance was another type of court fell: High Court (down 14 per cent to 390), Sheriff Summary (down 21 per cent to 1,199) and District and Stipendiary Magistrates (down 14 per cent to 127).

Table 1 Criminal appeals, by type of court of first instance, 1994-2003

1. Revised figures
2. Includes appeals where type of court of first instance not known.
3. Includes Stipendiary Magistrates Court.

Table 2 Criminal appeals, by type of appeal, 1994-2003

1. Revised figures.
2. Includes appeals relating to acquittals.
3. Includes appeals against conviction and sentence.

One of the main reasons for the relatively large overall drop in the number of appeals concluded in 2002 and 2003 was a judicial direction in September 2002 that priority be given to dealing with solemn conviction appeals. The amount of court time allocated for dealing with that class of appeal was increased accordingly, from 19 court weeks in 2001 to 26 in 2002. As there is one appeal Court per week for criminal matters, the knock-on effect was a reduced capacity - by the equivalent of around 630 sentence appeals - and delays in dealing with other types of criminal appeal business.

The continued priority given in 2003 to dealing with solemn conviction appeals, combined with the demands of trial and civil court business on judicial time and efforts to conclude long standing appeal cases, contributed to an increase in the time taken to deal with criminal appeals. Between 2002 and 2003, the overall average duration of completed appeals increased by 23 per cent to 151 days. However, the average duration of completed solemn conviction appeals decreased by 31 per cent (to 245 days), reflecting the priority attaching to these cases. Increases were recorded for all other classes of completed appeal: the average duration of summary conviction appeals increased by 5 per cent (to 330 days); and the average duration of solemn and summary sentence appeals increased by 21 per cent (to 143 days) and 71 per cent (to 100 days) respectively. Increases were recorded in the time taken to deal with appeals from all types of courts of first instance except the High Court, where the average duration fell by 16 per cent to 185 days. The increases recorded for the other types of court were: Sheriff Solemn (up 10 per cent to 146 days), Sheriff Summary (up 49 per cent to 139 days)and District and Stipendiary Magistrates (up 72 per cent to 177 days).

The majority (74 per cent) of appeals concluded in 2003 were still completed within 6 months; however, this was lower than the corresponding proportion in 2002 (85 per cent). Eighteen per cent of solemn conviction appeals and 33 per cent of summary conviction appeals concluded in 2003 took a year or more to complete (down from the 2002 proportions of 35 per cent and 44 per cent respectively). The proportion of solemn and summary sentence only appeals which took this long were much lower, each at one per cent.

Of the appeals concluded in 2003, 14 per cent related to conviction alone, 81 per cent to sentence alone and 6 per cent to both conviction and sentence. A very small number of appeals related to the leniency of a sentence or an acquittal. The majority (76 per cent) of appeals involved persons who had been given a custodial sentence while a further 16 per cent related to persons who had been fined.

Table 3 Criminal appeals, by main crime and disposal under appeal, 2003

- Nil * Less than 0.5
1. Includes disposal not known
2. Includes sentence length not known.
3. Includes type of offence not known.
4. Percentages based on the number of persons with a charge proved in 2002.

The total of 2,133 completed appeals in 2003 was equivalent to around two per cent of the total number of persons convicted in criminal proceedings. As a proportion of all persons convicted, appeals were relatively more frequent in cases involving custodial sentences (10 per cent) than for fines or other types of sentence (1 per cent or less). This proportion also tended to increase with custodial sentence length: it was 6 per cent for sentences of up to 6 months compared to 57 per cent for cases involving sentences of 4 years and over.

Of the total number of appeals completed in 2003, 58 per cent were refused at the sift stage or abandoned, while a further 21 per cent were dismissed. The remainder comprised appeals which were sustained, either in relation to an appeal against a conviction (5 per cent) or to an appeal against sentence (16 per cent). A small number of appeals resulted in an increase in the original sentence imposed. The overall proportion of appeals which were sustained was highest for cases from Sheriff Solemn Courts (29 per cent) and lowest for cases from the Sheriff Summary Courts (16 per cent).

Table 4 Criminal appeals, by outcome, 1994-2003

1. Revised figures.
2. Includes a small number of other sustained appeals.
3. Includes appeals against conviction and sentence.
4. Includes, from September 1995 onwards, appeals refused at sift stage.

NOTES

1. All findings of the court of first instance are subject to appeal to the High Court of Justiciary, sitting as an appeal court. Convicted offenders may appeal against their conviction; against sentence; or against both conviction and sentence. The right to appeal sentence alone in summary cases has been available since 1981, following changes introduced by the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1980. From late September 1995 leave to appeal must, in nearly all cases, be granted by a High Court judge; refusal of leave may be appealed to the High Court. The Lord Advocate has a right to refer a case resulting in acquittal to the High Court for a decision on a point of law (though this does not affect the acquittal), while the Crown also has a right of appeal against a sentence on grounds of undue leniency.

2. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) was established on 1 April 1999 to review and investigate cases of suspected wrongful conviction and/or sentence 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 that a reference should be made, it may refer a case to the High Court. Once a case is referred, the High Court will determine the case as if it was a normal appeal.

3. 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 and certain types of procedural appeal, such as those which are for an extension of time on an existing appeal, are excluded from the figures.

4. 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 9 November 2004. Some minor revisions to data published previously for 2001 and 2002 have been incorporated into this Statistics Release; any further revisions to the data will be reported in future Statistics Releases.

5. The data for 2003 was collected via an electronic extract from the High Court of Justiciary's appeals case management system. This method 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 and those for earlier years. The extent of any discontinuity will be the subject of further analysis, the results of which will be reported in the next Statistics Release in this series.

6. This Statistics Release may be viewed on the Scottish Executive Internet Web site: www.scotland.gov.uk/stats/bulletins/00394-00.asp .

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