Dear Crown Law Office,

I would like to request under the Official Information Act about the Attorney-General directing stays of proceedings. I would like to request:

* how often has the Attorney-General directed that a stay of proceedings be given under s176 of the Criminal Procedure Act/s378 of the Crimes Act in the last 10 years? It would be great if you could provide more information about this, such as a breakdown of the date of the stay and the charge that the person was facing

I am interested to see just how often this occurs: from my research online it seems to be very rare (I only found one case in the last 10 years, in 2006) but I could have missed something, or a stay of proceedings may not been reported.

If there are problems getting information from this time-frame, or I can assist in any way by rephrasing my request then please feel free to let me know. If this information does not come under the OIA due to Crown Law holding it in their law officer function then I would appreciate it if you could release it as a courtesy.

Yours faithfully,

Joshua Grainger

Dear Charlotte Brooke,

Thank you very much for your response. I was only thinking about stays of proceedings in relation to pseudo 'abuse of process' cases: for example the attempted private prosecution of Moshe Ya’alon for breaches of the Geneva Convention in 2004. Now that I have read your letter I have a much better picture of how stays of proceedings are actually used.

Yours sincerely,

Joshua Grainger