The public interest immunity decision

I am reliably informed that the Criminal Appeal Court's decision on the public hinterest immunity (PII) plea taken by the UK Government (in relation to the document from a foreign country relating to timers) will be released tomorrow (Friday, 7 March). This was the issue debated at the third procedural hearing held on 20 February. See
http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2008/02/third-procedural-hearing.html
and
http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2008/02/third-procedural-hearing-much-as.html

The court has to decide (a) whether it is competent for the Advocate General for Scotland (the UK Government's Scottish legal adviser) to claim PII in Scottish criminal proceedings when the Lord Advocate (Scotland's public prosecutor and a minister in the Scottish Government) has chosen not to claim it; and (b) if it is competent, whether the public interest in "national security", which the UK Government is asserting would be affected if the document were disclosed, outweighs the public interest in the administration of justice which requires that accused persons should have access to all material that could assist their case.

There will also on Friday be a further brief procedural hearing at which Mr Megrahi's legal team will raise the issue of the Crown's refusal to allow them access to the productions used at the original trial; and the issue of the Crown's contention (in the face of appellate decisions to the contrary) that the new appeal should be confined to those issues in respect of which the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) decided that there might have been a miscarriage of justice. In my account on this blog on 20 December 2007 of the second procedural hearing where this issue was first raised, I commented:

"Two other matters were discussed at the hearing. The first was the scope of the appeal. The Crown had earlier stated that it would consider asking the court to exercise its discretion to refuse to allow to be argued all (or some) of the Grounds of Appeal that related to matters that had been investigated by the SCCRC but rejected by that body. Today Mr Clancy went considerably further: the Crown now wished to argue that, as a matter of law, the Appeal Court was not permitted to hear Grounds of Appeal that had not been accepted by the SCCRC. That is a legal issue that has already been decided by a three-judge bench who held in 2004 that there was no such restriction on the Grounds of Appeal that could be heard. Nothing daunted, Mr Clancy asked for a five-judge court to be convened to reconsider the matter. The court ordered the Lord Advocate to submit within one month a written note setting out her legal arguments and appointed the appellant to submit written answers within one month thereafter. A five-judge court would then be convened to hear oral argument."