Jenkin v The Director of Public Prosecutions (Queensland)

The applicant, Jenkin, sought special leave to appeal to the High Court of Australia against a decision of the Supreme Court of Queensland. The core of the dispute concerned the interpretation of section 590 of the *Criminal Code* of Queensland, specifically the phrase "entitled to be discharged," and the extent to which a court's jurisdiction is enlivened by an application made under that section. The applicant argued that the Supreme Court, once its jurisdiction was invoked by his application under section 590, should have been able to control the future conduct of the criminal proceedings.

The legal issues before the High Court were whether section 590 of the *Criminal Code* of Queensland, which allows a person committed for trial to apply to be brought to trial, grants the court jurisdiction to control the future conduct of proceedings. Alternatively, the Court was asked to consider whether a prosecuting authority has the right to indefinitely refrain from presenting an indictment against a person who has been committed for trial and has subsequently applied under section 590 to be brought to trial.

The applicant contended that section 590 represented a special statutory provision that altered the usual position where a court's criminal jurisdiction is enlivened only upon the presentation of an indictment. He submitted that a person committed for trial could make an application under section 590 regardless of whether an indictment had already been presented. The applicant's argument was that this statutory provision empowered the court, upon application, to manage the proceedings, implying a limitation on the prosecutor's ability to delay indefinitely the presentation of an indictment.