A JUDGE will summon a senior crown prosecutor to court to explain why they plan to drop election fraud charges against former police and crime commissioner candidate Jonathon Seed.

The 64-year-old Conservative councillor came to Oxford Crown Court on Monday morning expecting to hear prosecutor Rhiannon Sadler formally offer no evidence and the judge pronounce him not guilty of making a ‘false statement’ on candidacy papers for the 2021 Wiltshire and Swindon crime commissioner election.

But Judge Michael Gledhill QC refused to accept Ms Sadler’s explanation as to why the prosecution had dropped and adjourned the case for a week and ordered the attendance of a senior CPS lawyer to ‘tell me in public why this decision has been taken’.

He told the prosecutor: “Putting it frankly, I am not a rubber stamp and I have severe misgivings about the prosecution’s decision because I haven’t been given the reasons and so I am going to require the prosecution to give me the reasons.”

He had previously been told by Ms Sadler that a decision was taken to offer no evidence after Seed’s lawyers filed a formal statement in April setting out the defence he would run at trial.

He was expected to tell a jury did not realise his then 28-year-old conviction for drink driving disqualified him from standing as police and crime commissioner.

In law, any conviction for an ‘imprisonable’ offence automatically bars someone from standing for the job. Seed was fined – rather than jailed - in 1993 for drink driving, but because the offence carries a potential prison sentence he was ineligible to stand for commissioner.

The conviction came to light only after votes had been cast last May. The election had to be re-run at an anticipated cost of £1.5m. An investigation into the poll was conducted by Thames Valley Police’s fraud squad.

Seed was not the only candidate in the 2021 race to have failed to declare a previous conviction, Oxford Crown Court was told on Monday.

Defence barrister Richard Wormald QC said: “There was a candidate from the Green Party, Graham [Brig] Oubridge, who in almost identical terms he too had failed to declare he had been convicted of an imprisonable offence. In his case he had, indeed, been in prison – been sent to prison for three days, albeit I think 26 years ago.”

Mr Wormald said the decision to prosecute or not was ‘ultimately’ up to the CPS. His client had been told no evidence would be offered and was ‘entitled to receive his acquittal’.

Ms Sadler said that the case was reviewed after the defence case statement was received, albeit two-and-a-half months late – firstly by the CPS reviewing lawyer, then the head of the unit, the head of the division and, finally, by CPS head of special crime Nick Price.

That failed to satisfy Judge Gledhill, who said: “Who would like to come along tomorrow to explain to me the reasons for this decision? I haven’t been given any reasons apart from the fact it is in the public interest.”

Describing the case as ‘high-profile and sensitive’, he said the public was ‘entitled’ to a ‘full and proper explanation’ from the Crown.

Having already put the case back for five hours to enable the prosecutor to obtain more detailed instructions, the judge adjourned the case until Monday, July 11, for a senior CPS lawyer to appear before him. He allowed the lawyer to attend court via video link, but said he would have preferred him ‘to come along and look me in the eye’.

In a parting shot, the judge warned Ms Sadler: “I don’t want platitudes, I want reasons.”

Following the hearing, Seed said: “Clearly, it has been a difficult day and this is not a result we’d have hoped for today, but the judge is absolutely right to satisfy himself as to why the CPS dropped this case so late in the day or, indeed, why they brought it in the first place.”

This story was written by Tom Seaward. He joined the team in 2021 as Oxfordshire's court and crime reporter.

To get in touch with him email: Tom.Seaward@newsquest.co.uk

Follow him on Twitter: @t_seaward

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