Ronald Cochrane v. Her Majesty's Advocate [2006] HCJAC 27

In October and November 2000, the petitioner was tried in the Sheriff Court at Perth on an indictment on a charge of inter alia conspiracy to break in to a house but the charge did not aver any intention to steal. He was convicted of that, among other, charges. He appealed against conviction to the High Court of Justiciary. On 6 November 2002 the court refused his appeal. The ground of appeal argued before the court was that the conviction of the appellant constituted a miscarriage of justice in respect that the matter of which he was charged and convicted did not constitute a crime according to the law of Scotland . The court concluded that, while conspiracy merely to break into a house was not a crime according to the law of Scotland and the charge against the appellant was accordingly irrelevant, that irrelevancy, which had not been raised in the court of trial, was not a ground on which the conviction could be set aside. The petitioner made an application to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission. In a Statement of Reasons dated December 2003 under section 194D(5) of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995, the Commission stated that it had examined the matters raised in the applicant's case and that the outcome of the enquiries was that the Commission believed that a miscarriage of justice, in terms of procedure, might have occurred in respect of the appellant's conviction but that it did not consider that it was in the interests of justice that the case be referred to the High Court. The petitioner then presented to the court here a petition in which he sought to invoke its nobile officium and invite the court to set aside the interlocutor of 6 November 2002 with a view to having his conviction on the conspiracy charge quashed. The primary issue in this case was whether the nobile officium could competently be invoked to challenge the interlocutor of 6 November 2002 following the petition to the SCCRC