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D v Secretary of State for the Home Department, Court of Appeal - Administrative Court, December 19, 2002, [2002] EWHC 2805 (Admin)

CO/5036/2001
Neutral Citation No.: [2002] EWHC 2805 (Admin.)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEENS BENCH DIVISION
ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand,
London, WC2A 2LL

Thursday 19 December 2002
Before:

THE HONOURABLE MR JUSTICE STANLEY BURNTON

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Between:


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(Transcript of the Handed Down Judgment of
Smith Bernal Wordwave Limited, 190 Fleet Street
London EC4A 2AG
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Official Shorthand Writers to the Court)
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Richard Gordon QC and Hugh Southey (instructed by Peter Edwards & Co) for the Claimant
Nathalie Lieven (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) for the Defendant

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JudgmentMr Justice Stanley Burnton:

Introduction
1. This case concerns the inter-relationship of the provisions of the Mental Health Act 1983 (``the MHA'') with those of the Criminal Justice Act 1991 in relation to discretionary life prisoners who have been made the subject of a transfer direction under section 47 of the MHA and a restriction direction under section 49 of that Act. The detention of such prisoners is subject to two statutory regimes, that of the MHA and that of penal legislation. Persons who are detained under either one of these regimes have a Convention and a statutory right to have the lawfulness of their detention reviewed by an impartial and independent tribunal, in the case of those detained under the Mental Health Act by a Mental Health Review Tribunal and in the case of discretionary life prisoners, after the expiration of the penal period of their sentence, by the Parole Board. Someone such as the Claimant, who is detained under both regimes, must have his case for his discharge from detention considered both by the tribunal and the Board, and both must consider that his continued detention is unnecessary if he is to be released. 2. The Claimant was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1989. His tariff, as it was then known, i.e. the minimum period of his detention, imposed for punishment and deterrence (the ``relevant part'' of his sentence for the purposes of section 34 of the Criminal Justice Act 1991), was determined to be 6 years, and it expired in 1...
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