Where art thou, oh prosecutor?

My Cumbria Constabulary case shows why strict due process is vital to criminal law

Header image taken at a freedom rally in Carlisle — March 2022

It is just over a month since I was in Carlisle for a “Mention hearing” (i.e. procedural pre-trial hearing) in which my abuse of process motion was ignored and I was railroaded towards a trial for a non-crime of “parking on the public road causing no harm to anyone”. After the court appearance, I quickly realised that the handoff between Cumbria Constabulary and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) seemed to have been fumbled, raising questions over the legitimacy of proceedings. I got in touch with the court to ask for clarity over who had been prosecuting me when. They have failed to respond despite multiple requests. They have also failed to rule on my abuse of process motion, further compounding the abuse of process.

In the meantime, I wrote to the CPS asking for a named contact responsible for my case so I could do proper discovery to mount a defence. I got no response; who wants to be on the hook for a fraudulent mess? So I wrote again. And still got no response. So I lodged a formal complaint that the prosecution have gone into hiding, and you cannot have a fair trial when the other side has put on an invisibility cloak hoping to avoid accountability for participating in a malicious and baseless prosecution. I now have an administrative response to my complaint, with a phone call next week with one of their senior prosecutors to discuss the matter. As CPS are the least culpable party, I am hoping that a face-saving way can be found to drop the case and back out gracefully.

It is perfectly acceptable to be summonsed to court, prosecuted, and then acquitted if there was a probable cause of action in the first place. Let’s say I had parked in a way that had appeared to cause obstruction, but my car had broken down, and I had gone away to seek help. There would have been no way that a police officer could have known that, and it is why you are given the opportunity to mount a defence. The absence of intent or recklessness would have removed the justification for punishment, even if there was a technical infraction of a motoring rule. That is not, however, the situation I confront. A meritless case has been fabricated, and then prosecuted via procedural fraud.

There are supposed to be three safeguards against the public being dragged to court for non-crimes, and forced to defend themselves, with all the attendant anxiety, preparation time, and personal expense:

1. The police are meant to qualify every case before investigation and only turn over cases where there is a real crime for prosecution.

2. The public prosecution is supposed to apply two tests — evidence and public interest — before accepting the case and bringing it to court.

3. The court is supposed to validate each summons independently so that there is a properly formed case that identifies a real crime and reasonable personal suspicion.

In my case:

1. The police are going on fishing expeditions for fixed penalty revenue, which is unlawful. Knowing this, they are hiding behind a synthetic identity of “Central Ticket Office”, which they will not validate as their own. When challenged, they initiate a malicious prosecution against a “blob of cars parked at various times and places next to signs that are void whose owners they want money from” with a bonus s172 charge for not responding to unlawful paperwork. A criminal case requires an accusation against a specific party, with supporting evidence, and that is lacking; the case is void.

2. As I understand it, the Single Justice Procedure allows police to initiate prosecutions for minor motoring matters, and when contested (as this is) they can be handed over to the CPS. This opens up an accountability loophole, as the police can start off a fraudulent prosecution, and rely on the court rubber-stamping it — an administrative simulation of justice. At this point it is unclear to me if the summons was even genuinely issued by the court, or if the police are pulling the same trick as the councils by impersonating a court and borrowing their authority.

3. When it goes wrong and an informed member of the public rumbles the cash grab scam, the police can dump the case into the lap of the CPS and run away. This was done so late in the day that the CPS were forced to attend what was notionally an adjournment hearing to allow the CPS to properly review the case. But (I suspect) the police should have attended, not the CPS, as the CPS had not properly taken over the case by applying the evidence and public interest tests. So the CPS were prosecuting, but had not taken the necessary steps to become prosecutor, so had no authority.

What we have here is one branch of the state — the police — maliciously using another — the court — who negligently allow a third — the public prosecutor — to carelessly take the hit for the misconduct of the first. The prosecutor, who openly admitted to having only been given the case 30 minutes before the hearing, should have asked for a stay on proceedings until he had taken the opportunity to review it properly. In 99% plus of cases the police are acting in their remit, so he was blindsided by a case where the defendant is the victim and the police are the criminals. Continuing with the hearing wasn’t the lawful or righteous thing to do, but there was no desire to do wrong by the man.

While the CPS may have been unprofessional in failing to respond to my subsequent requests for personal accountability, I can also sympathise with the quandary they have been put in. They have been set up and used by the police, so are a co-victim along with myself, while simultaneously being asked to prosecute me as a defendant. That is not right, and having been the victim of crime myself (multiple times), I greatly appreciate the role that they play. For that matter, I also am deeply grateful for honest law enforcement and courts of law. I have no issue with authorities who are doing their job. Just do your job!

To give this Kafkaesque process some body for you to work with, here is the email I sent to the court on 14th March, which they have given no substantive response to:

Dear Carlisle Magistrates’ Court,

I am writing to request urgent clarification regarding the Mention hearing on 3 March 2025. I acknowledge that this hearing arose following my earlier application to adjourn the trial date. (There was a misunderstanding in our email correspondence where I initially thought it was to bring the trial date forward, not adjourn it; please excuse this lapse.)

The sequence of events raises serious procedural concerns about the lawful constitution of the prosecution and handoff from the police to CPS. To help you understand my concern, here is the timeline:

10 December 2024: The Magistrates' Court issued a summons, with the charge being initiated by the police, not the CPS.
18 December 2024: The court confirmed that this was a police-led prosecution via postal charge, despite my expectation that CPS would handle non-SJP contested cases in court.
14 February 2025: Having had no outreach from the prosecution to offer evidence, I write to the court seeking clarity over who is actually prosecuting and (electronic) service information, so I can engage in an exchange of digital photographs. This is forwarded to both CPS and Police, suggesting confusion by the court as to who is actively prosecuting.
14 February 2025: I write to the Chief Constable demanding withdrawal of a malicious retaliatory prosecution with no evidence of a crime.
17 February 2025: Police Prosecutor Wayne Dove confirmed that the CPS had not yet taken over the case but that the IDPC would be served shortly. This confirms that procedural uncertainty over who was prosecuting remained unresolved at this stage.
19 February 2025: I write to the court asking for an adjournment as there are unresolved procedural and jurisdiction matters.
20 February 2025: Sergeant Richard Barry, on behalf of Cumbria Constabulary, refused my request for withdrawal, implicitly confirming that the police were still in control of the prosecution at this stage.
26 February 2025 (morning): I was notified by the court that a Mention hearing had been scheduled for 3 March 2025.
26 February 2025 (afternoon): The police served the IDPC, confirming that they were still actively managing the prosecution at this point, and were handing over to CPS.
28 February 2025: I submitted a Motion to Dismiss for Abuse of Process, outlining procedural failures, which the court acknowledged but did not address at the hearing. I also submitted a Motion to Dismiss for lack of evidence of a crime, which was acknowledged by the court via email, but also not addressed at the hearing.
3 March 2025 (Mention hearing): The prosecutor spoke, but was not identified or introduced to me as the defendant. The judge appeared surprised when I interjected to confirm if it was the police or CPS sat in the prosecution seat; a reasonable question in the unsettled circumstances. The CPS prosecutor stated that he had received the case 30 minutes before coming to court. The trial date was deferred for three months, without addressing the issue that no clear cause of action had been identified, nor any evidence of a crime presented. The procedural irregularities that normally merit dismissal were overlooked.

Given the original trial date of 10 March 2025, I am sure you can empathise how this was an unsatisfactory experience as a Defendant. It is impossible to engage in a defence when the prosecuting entity is unclear and no prosecution evidence has been offered in a timely manner. Noting this timeline of events, I have a natural concern whether the Mention hearing was listed lawfully.

Key questions for clarification:

1. Who was legally acting as the prosecuting authority between 14th February 2025 (when I requested case withdrawal from Cumbria Police) and the Mention hearing on 3rd March 2025?
2. Did Cumbria Constabulary formally hand over prosecution authority to CPS before the Mention hearing? If so, when?
3. Based on the Prosecutor’s statement, it appeared that the CPS had not reviewed the case prior to the hearing. Assuming this is true, was the court aware that the CPS had not yet reviewed the case when listing the Mention hearing? (If untrue, when was it reviewed by CPS and what evidence is there of this?)
4. If the case had not been reviewed by CPS, what lawful authority was the prosecution acting under at that hearing?

I look forward to your prompt response within five working days, otherwise I will have to escalate the matter as a continuing abuse of process.

Yours sincerely,
Martin Geddes

The real lesson here is why entities like public prosecutors (such as CPS) must ruthlessly stick to procedure, such as case induction tests to ensure it is properly founded and formed. On the one hand, you have crazed abusers who believe their own lies, plead victimhood when they are perpetrator, and weaponise all procedures to evade justice. Scrupulous following the rules allows them no “get out of jail free” clause that there was fear or favour in administering justice. If there is evidence and a public interest, there should be a prosecution, no matter what the emotive protests.

On the other hand, there are non-cases like mine, which have been contrived out of nowhere for the enrichment of institutional coffers. A prosecutor with no standing is a big problem in this context — and when I challenge their adherence to procedure, stonewalling me becomes a serious injustice, as it violates basic due process and right to a fair trial. I am not being awkward in demanding a legally constituted prosecution who will actually engage with me as a defendant! My whole public calling is to insist that people who act in self-will and break the law should be held to account, so it isn’t like I am some defiant anarchist resisting their authority.

As an anti-corruption campaigner it is easy to condemn these parties for failing to follow their own rules, but that is to become self-righteous. If I was a prosecutor who had turned up for modestly rewarded work that gets little appreciation, and been bounced at the last minute by police acting dishonourably into a hearing I was not prepared for, then I could easily have made the same procedural error. My singular regret in this whole matter was not shaking the man’s hand after the hearing, as he is the one carrying heavy responsibility, and who should be able to depend on the honesty of his law enforcement colleagues and the integrity of the court. He was let down by both. There was a mistake, and it should be corrected, but it is not deserving of a reprimand.

There has to be that moment when you “turn the other cheek” to verify that the due process infraction was deliberate, to distinguish a material mistake from the spiritual error. Until you have passed that point, there is nothing to be angry about; life is full of setbacks. The police have been given many opportunities to back down from this particular malicious prosecution, so deserve to be fully held to account. The court has allowed itself to be misused by the police, so there ought to be disciplinary consequences. The CPS needs a fair opportunity to make this right, as they are still in the phase of working out what went wrong. I will let you know if they do the righteous thing; the full truth and a simple apology are the end of the matter for them, if it were left to me.

On the Natchez Trace Parkway, TN. Not my shiny bike, but is my accidental selfie.