Acquittals (Hansard, 1 July 2002)

§ The Solicitor-General

I regularly receive reports from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), who maintain a record of the number of cases resulting in a judge-ordered or directed acquittal and capture a broad analysis of the reasons underlying the failure of the case.

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The figures shown in the table contain an analysis for the year ending March 2002. The figures in column one represent the number of defendants whose case resulted in a judge-ordered or judge-directed acquittal together with the reasons for the outcome. The figures in column two express these as a percentage of completed Crown Court cases (not including cases dealt with under its appellate jurisdiction).

In the year 2001–02 a judges-ordered or directed acquittal in 13,306 cases, representing 15.8 per cent. of the total. Of these, the largest figure (4,515 cases) represents cases where a judge ordered acquittal because a prosecution witness was missing, or refused to give

Reasons for judge-ordered and judge-directed acquittals 2001–02
	Number of defendants¹	Percentage of completed cases²
Judge-ordered acquittals
Witness missing/refuses or unable to give evidence/complaint withdrawn	4,515	5.4
Defendant medical problems	257	0.3
Other indictments or sentences	1,072	1.8
Doubts identification evidence	966	1.1
Other evidence inadmissible/unreliable/conflicting	3,078	3.6
Legal element missing from prosecution case	771	0.9
Long delay or abuse of process	565	0.7
Adjournment refused/P11 application refused	600	0.7
Total	11,824	14.0
Judge-directed acquittals
Identification evidence unreliable	271	0.3
Legal element missing from prosecution case	243	0.3
Doubts over other evidence	460	0.5
Confession or other evidence ruled inadmissible	38	0.0
Other reason	470	0.6
Total	1,482	1.8
¹This column shows the number of defendants whose case resulted in judge-ordered and directed acquittal.
² This column expresses these figures as a percentage of completed Crown Court cases, excluding appeals and committals for sentence.