Report and Recommendations - Scottish Government

5.2.5 Particularly in view of the terms of Article 5, it is interesting to reflect on howimportant prompt appearance in court is at common law and in statute.However, the modern practice is expressed thus 7 :“As soon as possible after his arrest, the accused is brought before asheriff for examination. Such examination should, if possible, takeplace not later than the morning of the first day after arrest, not being aSaturday, Sunday or court holiday. But in some courts it has becomeroutine to delay it until the afternoon”.5.2.6 “As soon as possible” is a very elastic phrase and can depend on a wide rangeof circumstances. Moreover, and of considerable significance in the currentcontext, the jewel in the system became dulled with the introduction of section14 detention. As commented upon previously, the Thomson Committee hadnot envisaged that detention would be used in cases where there was already asufficiency of evidence and the suspect could simply be arrested and chargedin the normal way 8 . In those commonplace cases, the period from the suspectbeing restrained and subsequently appearing in court would remain that undersection 135 of the 1995 Act. He/she would be in court on the day after he/shefirst came into police custody. But if a person were not arrested, but merelydetained, section 135 did not immediately bite. It would only be once theperson were arrested at the expiry of a detention period that time would start torun.5.2.7 In practical terms, detention became the common method of placing a suspectin custody in the more serious cases where there was an intention to interview.7 Renton & Brown (6th ed) at para 12.10, reflecting in part the earlier formulation of s 135(3)8 see para 2.0.20 above100