Judge refuses to stand aside amid row over UK Covid trial delays

A senior judge has refused to step down from a case involving custody time limits after she replaced another judge who criticised the government over delays in delivering justice.

Mrs Justice Whipple, a high court judge, was asked to step in to decide whether or not a defendant should continue to be held in custody for more than a year awaiting a trial date that has repeatedly been delayed during the coronavirus pandemic.

The crown court judge originally presiding, Keith Raynor, has recently refused to extend the timeframe in two other unrelated cases and has attacked the government for failing to provide the resources needed to clear the judicial backlog.

And he has claimed he has been put under inappropriate pressure to keep defendants behind bars while they await trials.

The lawyer for a third defendant, Sarah Forshaw QC, claimed Raynor was removed because senior judiciary were “unhappy with [his] previous decisions, they have an agenda to prevent further judgments from Judge Raynor in the same vein as his previous two, that the senior judiciary is forum-shopping to achieve the result that it wants”.

Appointing the more senior judge, she argued, would create the perception of bias, meaning Whipple should recuse herself. She did not argue there was any evidence of actual bias.

But, sitting in Woolwich crown court, Whipple concluded it was proper for a high court judge to be appointed to preside over a case in such a way and that no fair-minded and informed observer, having considered the facts, would conclude that there was a real possibility that the tribunal was biased.

While it was suggested that it was the state’s failure in its responsibility to provide the means to try an accused person that was behind the delays to the trial, Whipple said the pandemic was an exceptional circumstance.

She granted the prosecution’s request for an extension of the custody time limit until next year and denied bail to the defendant, who has denied a charge of attempted murder. He has already been on remand for more than a year and will have spent more than 16 months behind bars by the time he stands trial.

Raynor’s complaints put the government’s plans to get the criminal justice system back up and running under the spotlight. Campaigners have said innocent people are “being held for months in prison awaiting their trials, ignored by an underfunded and crumbling criminal justice system”.

Griff Ferris, of Fair Trials said: “These people are suffering as a result of the government’s failure to properly resource the justice system.” His group said freedom of information requests had revealed the government “does not know how many people have been held in jail for excessive periods while waiting for a trial since the coronavirus lockdown began”.

Ferris added that the government’s failings were forcing people to “languish in prison while cases are delayed until 2021 and even 2022”. He added: “We need a properly resourced justice system to reduce the backlog of cases, and for low-risk defendants to be released from pre-trial detention.”

Both the Ministry of Justice and the Judicial Office said they were unable to comment on individual cases.