The Defence Brief

A short post on section 172 notices this afternoon. I tend to focus on drink driving offences, although I do undertake any type of motoring law case if asked, so section 172 notices pop up from time to time in my work. If you don’t already know, section 172 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 requires the registered keeper of a vehicle to identify the driver of the vehicle when the police allege that the driver at the time was responsible for an offence. If you’ve ever had a speeding ticket through the post then you will probably have been sent one of these documents sent out with the Notice of Intended Prosecution. Failing to provide the information is an offence in itself that carried a fine and six penalty points. There are technical legal defences but the most common defence I’ve seen is people giving evidence that they did return the form but it got lost somewhere along the line. In general, when a person gives evidence that they posted the section 172 notice having comple...

Alison Saunders, the Director of Public Prosecutions I wrote recently about the spate of acid attacks and the proposals for dealing with them suggested by some MPs . Today, I want to talk about the comments by the Director of Public Prosecutions, Alison Saunders. Ms Saunders comments appear to show that she is somebody who has no understanding of the role of the CPS or the law itself. Now Ms Saunders is a very experienced prosecutor and lawyer. She has risen to the very top of her organisation and I do not for a minute believe that she does not understand what the CPS does or what the law is regarding acid attacks. According to the Guardian newspaper, Ms Saunders said that there is a strong public interest in her authorising the CPS to give out the strongest punishments to acid attackers. I suspect she didn’t say that exactly since it’s not a direct quote and is most likely badly paraphrased by a journalist. But, it’s worth saying that the CPS do not give out punishmen...