Where an extraordinary appeal is found well-founded under the Criminal Procedure Act, does the court reverse part of the original judgment, the procedure below, or the whole judgment and decide the case again?
General information · Not legal advice
Material to check
In a practice file of this kind, we read the copy of the original judgment to see whether it violated statute and whether it was unfavourable to the defendant, the record of the proceedings below for a procedural violation, and the ruling that found the appeal well-founded.
These are types of material to look for, not evidence already verified by PRO SE.
Where readings differ
One reading takes the provision's distinction at its word: where the court finds the extraordinary appeal well-founded it must judge accordingly, so that where the original judgment violated statute the violating part alone is reversed, while if the original judgment was unfavourable to the defendant the original judgment is reversed in full and a new judgment is rendered on the defendant's case.
Another reading marks the provision's two separate branches: where the violation lies in the proceedings below, it reverses only the procedure that violated statute, and nothing further is stated about the judgment itself in that case; the provision also gives no test for when an original judgment counts as unfavourable to the defendant, so that turns on what the file shows.
Your judgment
If a file shows both a violation in the original judgment and a violation in the proceedings below, how does the provision's distinction tell the court which branch governs?
PRO SE does not make this decision or keep a case record on this public site.When to reconsider
We revisit this card if the provision is amended to add criteria for when an original judgment is unfavourable to the defendant or to address both violations together, or if a court decision explains how the two branches interact.