Following the very useful briefing by the Armed Forces Implementation Team at the 2007 AGM, it has been agreed that they will keep us informed of significant events as they arise. Briefing notes will be added here as received.

Note 1 (December 2007):

EXPLANATORY MEMORANDUM ON ALIGNED COURT MARTIAL RULES 2007

Court-Martial (Army) Rules 2007 Order No: 3442

Court-Martial (RN) Rules 2007 Order No: 3443

Court-Martial (RAF) Rules 2007 Order No: 3444

 The 2006 Act made certain amendments to the Service Discipline Acts (such as provision about binding pleas), that required supplementary provisions to be made in Rules. Rather than simply amend the existing three sets of Courts-Martial Rules a decision was taken to streamline the Rules and, within the vires of the Service Discipline Acts, to make them as similar as possible to the Rules that will be made under the 2006 Act. For this reason the current sets of Courts-Martial Rules are to be revoked and replaced with the attached Rules.

 These Orders will reduce the differences in the procedure and practice of courts-martial among the three Services, and will also facilitate a smooth transition to the 2006 Act system by introducing certain streamlining and modernising aspects ahead of the planned implementation of 2009.

These “interim” rules reflect changes to court-martial proceedings, including the adoption of provisions allowing an accused to be arraigned before a judge advocate alone (as opposed to a fully constituted and sworn court-martial board), and new powers for a judge advocate to issue summonses compelling the attendance of witnesses (including civilians).

 They make provision for:  

  • The combining of Directions Hearings and pre-trial hearings into one preliminary hearing.

  • The entering of a binding plea(s) at arraignment at such a preliminary hearing. This will usually occur in open court before a judge advocate sitting alone. This type of preliminary hearing will be called a Plea and Case Management Hearing (PCMH). (Defence advocateswill need to be robed unless the judge advocate specifically directs otherwise). 

  • Rulings made by judge advocates at a pre-trial hearing to be binding at trial.

  • Judge advocates to issue witness summonses allowing for witnesses (including civilian witnesses) to be arrested in order to compel their attendance.

  • Renaming the “President” the “President of the Board”. Further they provide for Presidents of the Board to be able to seek the leave of the judge advocate to provide a service impact statement (a statement made directly by the president of the board to the offender about the effects of his offending on the Service and the effects of the sentence on his Service career). 

  • For an all-civilian board when a court-martial tries a civilian defendant alone (unless there are exceptional circumstances that require the presence of service members of the board).

As far as practicable, these ”interim” rules have been modelled on Crown Court practice as regulated by the consolidated Criminal Procedure Rules 2005. A number of unavoidable differences remain between the rules governing courts-martial in the different Services.  These differences are reduced, however, by these three new sets of rules. The unified rules, which are due to be brought forward next year, will create a single court system for all of the services.

 Note 2 (February 2008)

 MOD briefing for Defence Advocates on 31 January 2008

 The Powerpoint presentation and script for this event has been made available to us for downloading here.

For the non-technicals: Click the link above and save the file to your computer. Open Powerpoint, then open the downloaded file. You will then be able to see the presentation slides and the accompanying script below it. If you just click on the link, you will probably only get the slide show.

Note 3 (7 October 2008)

Delay in implementing AFA 2006

There is a delay in implementing the start date of the Act until October 2009. It has been announced that the Director of Service Prosecutions (DSP) will be enabled to bring prosecutions under the existing acts from 1 Jan 09. 

            

 

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