CPS News Brief

Kevin Hutchinson-Foster – confirmation of charge details

The Mail on Sunday claimed last weekend (22 March) that the CPS “strangely” could not locate paperwork for a case relating to Kevin Hutchinson-Foster from 2008 in which charges were “mysteriously dropped”. This is not correct. Having been contacted on Thursday, we informed the newspaper on Friday that we were still waiting for information as the file would have been archived and it can take more than the time we had been given to retrieve information from a five-year-old case.

We have now established that  there were no charges dropped. Kevin Hutchinson-Foster was charged with possessing a prohibited weapon;  possessing ammunition without certificate, and possessing Class A controlled drug with intent to supply - Cocaine, possessing Class A controlled drug with intent to supply – Heroin and possessing Class B controlled drug– Cannabis/Cannabis resin. Following a trial he was convicted in March 2009 of the drugs offences and sentenced to 54 months imprisonment but was acquitted of both firearms offences by the jury. The file relating to this case would have been destroyed in February 2014 in line with our file retention scheme.

CPS statement on Operation Elveden appeal

CPS spokesperson said: “The judgement does not call into question the prosecution of the cases they considered but acknowledged this is an extremely difficult, and rarely visited, area of the law.  The Court of Appeal considered that the jury needed greater direction on how serious offending must be to amount to an abuse of the public’s trust than was given in this case and therefore could not be certain that the jury would have reached the same verdict if that direction had been given.

“As with all Court of Appeal rulings, the CPS will now consider the contents, and its implications, very carefully. No decision on possible retrials has been made.”

 

Additional information:

The decision on a retrial will be made by Tuesday 31 March as directed by the Court of Appeal.