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What is the territorial extent of the English courts' jurisdiction for the (common law) offence of the perversion of the course of justice?

The English Crown Prosecution Service's guidance on this offence doesn't cover this question.

Let us say, for example, that

  • a person lives in Scotland, or outside of the UK entirely (Note: I recognize these two cases may be wildly different.)
  • they have had some connection with the sending of an electronic communication to England
  • if the communication had been sent from England itself, it would have been prosecutable as an alleged perversion of the course of justice.

Would it then be lawful for the person to be tried in England?

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The English court would have jurisdiction to try the case which has an intended and (in the hypothetical) successful cause of criminal harm in England.

Outside the U.K., the English court would either issue an arrest warrant served upon the appearance of the perpetrator in England for some (presumably unrelated) reason, or could seek through the U.K. government to have the person extradited to England from the country where the suspect is present.

I am not familiar with how that process is handled between England and Scotland, and will have to allow someone more knowledgable to answer that part of the question.

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  • Many thanks for this. I suspect that if the putative perp would have an English arrest warrant issued against them which could serve as a basis for extradition from a foreign country, there's a somewhat simpler procedure than extradition for getting hold of them in Scotland and bringing them south of the border. Have you got a source for what you say in your first sentence ("cause of criminal harm")? Thanks again!
    – Cross
    Commented Jul 20 at 18:42
  • Just to correct one small point, the UK government doesn't have a role in extradition requests from the EU: it's in the gift of a district judge sitting at Westminster Magistrates' Court as the "judicial authority". The government only gets involved with extradition requests from outside of the EU when the Home Office must certify requests before referring them to Westminster Mag's (this is to ensure the subject's human rights and are protected, and for political / diplomatic reasons etc)
    – user 55905
    Commented Jul 22 at 11:08

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