A south Essex drugs case has had to be postponed after prosecutors served new evidence on the first day of trial.
Two Vietnamese men are accused of growing cannabis in Basildon on or before February 25.
Chun Nguyen, 46, and Thinh Thai, 38 – both of no fixed abode – first appeared in magistrates’ court in March, charged with producing 1,600 cannabis plants.
They pleaded not guilty and were due to go on trial at Basildon Crown Court on Tuesday (August 12).
But the case has had to be postponed due to delays in the service of evidence.
Messages retrieved from a smart phone, said by the authorities to have belonged to Thai, were sent off for translation by Essex Police in July.
The results were not received until August 4 and not served on the defence until Friday (August 7).
Defence barrister Anthony Rimmer, representing Thai, said that left no time for the translations to be checked by a defence expert for accuracy before the trial.
The hearing was further compromised when it transpired that one of the translators booked to attend for the defendants on Tuesday was the same man who had translated the phone messages, so was actually a prosecution witness, creating a conflict of interest.
The case was put off to Wednesday.
Then, said prosecutor Natalie Jolly, on Tuesday afternoon she discovered the translated messages were only part of the evidence retrieved from the phone.
A second tranche of material, which Essex Police thought it had served on the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for disclosure to the defence, had not been received – possibly due to a tech issue, she said.
As such, they were only handed to the defence late on Tuesday – and unlike the tranche handed over days earlier, these had not been translated.
Mrs Jolly said the case had only one officer assigned to it, who was expected to work on it around all his other duties.
His inspections of the phone began in April but were then discontinued until July, she said – and even then, he only manged to get it done by working extra hours.
"It is regrettable that this evidence was served so late in the day but it simply was not possible to serve it any sooner," the prosecutor said.
Judge Samantha Cohen postponed the trial to September and ordered the defendants to remain remanded in custody until then.
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