1991-01-21 10:19 SECURITY BRANCA
25
JUTA
hom in that case had been exercised so oppressively to
his prejudice, that the Court should have intervened to
stop the proceedings.
present case do not fall
known categories.
The facts of the
readily within any of the
The
categories are however never closed. Bearing in mind the Court's reluctance to extend the categories, I would
say that it offends against the sense of fairness for
the police, having established a regular practice of not
prosecuting over a long period of time, thereby leading
those who are concerned to arrive at a legitimate, Or
reasonable, expectation that such practice Will
continue, to suddenly alter that practice without prior warning and start prosecuting those very same offences
which had attracted nothing worse than a warning, or
repeated warnings, in the past.
However, it is for the executive, and more
particularly the police or the Attorney General in our
case, and not the Courts to decide whether in any
particular case the requirements of public interest
(e.g. national security in CCSU v Minister
Minister for Civil
Service (supra)) outweighs those of fairness so that the
defendants' legitimate expectation must yield.
The Crown however does not base their
arguments on the balance of public interests. Instead it was contended there had been no stated policy by the
police not to prosecute, that the executive cannot
suspend the law, that the defendants could not
not have a
legitimate expectation that they would not be prosecuted, that no prejudice to the defendants had been demonstrated, that the police had on more than one
occasion threatened prosecution,
that the law had not
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