The Defence Brief

Above is the video of an assault on a police officer. As the video explains, the police saw an incident as somebody was ejected from a bar and went to see what was happening. As PC GIlder was dealing with a man another man ran up behind him and punched him to the back of the head knocking the officer unconscious. The attacker was fined £165, which by any stretch of the imagination seems unjustifiably lenient especially when viewed against sentences recently imposed for far less serious assaults on politicians. The story has been picked up by several news outlets including the Daily Star and the Sun newspapers. Unsurprisingly all of the reports criticise the very lenient sentence imposed on this attacker. Interestingly though, none of the reports name the man and all of the reports give broadly the same information that appears to have been lifted entirely from the video above and presumably a press release that accompanied it. This does give the impression that the reports ...

Behind this doors: trials defendants are excluded from attending A couple of years ago the government introduced a new system of bringing prosecutions in the magistrates’ court, called the Single Justice Procedure Notice (SJPN). This procedure allows the police to initiate prosecutions more speedily than under the old system and effectively allows trials to be held in which the defendant is almost deemed guilty from the start. It can only be used for non-imprisonable offences but that can include a surprising range of allegations, e.g. it was recently used to prosecute an HGV driver alleged to have knocked down a cyclist. This new procedure arises from an amendment made to section 29 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 that allows for criminal proceedings to be instituted by the service of a written charge. Where a written charge is issued the prosecutor must at the same time issue either a requisition or a Single Justice Procedure Notice, which is a document that requires ...

Ant McPartlin I haven’t blogged about drink driving for a while, which is a bit of a shame for me since drink driving cases form the bulk of my case load. So, with the conviction and sentencing of Ant McPartlin, of Ant and Dec fame, this seems like a great time to talk about how sentencing works in drink driving cases using this case as an example. Mr McPartlin entered a guilty plea when he appeared in court, which negates the need for a trial because he admits that he committed the offence. The maximum sentence is six-months imprisonment, an unlimited fine and a driving disqualification. The minimum driving ban is 12 months but there is no cap on what the magistrates can impose, although I have yet to personally witness anybody receive a ban longer than five years and first-time offenders will rarely get such a lengthy ban. It should be noted that although the ban may end after a year or two, the conviction remains recorded on your driving record for 11 years. Once the defe...

New guilty plea reduction guidelines consulted upon Today the media are reporting on a consultation by the Sentencing Guidelines Council to reduce the sentences of defendants who agree to plead guilty.  The Guardian says, “[d] raft guidelines say for maximum reduction, defendants must plead guilty at first opportunity in court, with cuts dropping thereafter until trial ”. This news will come as a shock to most criminal solicitors and barristers given that in 2003 Parliament passed the Criminal Justice Act, section 144 of which requires courts to take into account the guilty plea, when it was entered and the circumstances of the plea.  The provision in the CJA 2003 wasn’t even particularly new when it was passed.  Criminal solicitors and barristers will also be aware of the Sentencing Guidelines Council’s “Reduction in Sentence for a Guilty Plea – Definitive Guideline” document, which was last revised in 2007 and gives all sorts of guidance on reducing a sent...

Royal Courts of Justice - hopefully they all know the law here Motoring law is a niche area of criminal law that not every criminal solicitor or barrister properly understands.  It’s no great surprise.  I wouldn’t want to get involved in a serious fraud case because, although I’m an experienced criminal solicitor who has conducted minor fraud trials in the distant past, I do not have the expertise to properly represent somebody facing trial in a major fraud case. Motoring law, and the drink driving offences I mostly handle, is every bit as complex as any other area of law and can be a minefield for the solicitor who doesn’t fully understand it.  That applies every bit as much to courts as it does to defence or prosecution solicitors. Recently, I was representing a client who I knew had a previous conviction for failing to provide a specimen of breath at the roadside.  So, I wasn’t surprised to see that on his list of previous convictions, what did surp...

Smoking heroin I was in court today for a duty session.  I represented a man with a long history of drug abuse and offending.  He had taken a ten-year break from crime and drugs, partly because he spent four-years in prison and partly because he met a woman, married and had kids.  A family breakdown has led him back to heroin. In the past year he’s committed a couple of minor thefts and been found in possession of heroin, which is why I represented him today. He agreed he needed help to kick the drugs and wanted me to apply for a pre-sentence report aimed at a community order with a drug rehabilitation requirement attached. His instructions and the recent offending indicate an escalation in offending meaning it’s very likely that without support he will find himself back before the court having committed further offences. Ultimately, my application for a PSR was refused on the basis that the offence was not sufficiently serious to warrant a punishm...

If you find yourself accused of a criminal offence you may be asked to chose whether you would like to be tried in the magistrates' court or the Crown Court.  Frequently, your solicitor will advise you to select trial by jury.  There are a few reasons for this but the most common that I've heard is that solicitors consider jury trials to be fairer for a variety of reasons.  Now, magistrates, particularly lay magistrates (that is non-lawyer magistrates) hate this advice because they consider themselves to be jolly decent chaps who are as fair as the next man. Today I came across a magistrate who reminded me why solicitors so often think of trial by jury as fairer than trial by magistrate. I was appearing in a court for a defendant who had been convicted at trial of burglary and was being sentenced by a lay bench.  The allegation is simple that the defendant went into a shop that had already been broken into and intended to steal - not that a theft actually took pl...

At the start of the year, I dealt with a client who was accused of an affray.  The case was considered too serious for the magistrates so the bench directed that it be committed for trial at the Crown Court.  The defendant was remanded in custody for his own protection (he was considered to be at high risk of self-harm). For reasons known only to the CPS, they took the view that as the allegation was so serious they would reduce the charge to common assault thus reducing the maximum possible sentence and meaning that the case could now only be heard in the magistrates' court.  A trial date was set for the end of February. Yesterday the case came before the court.  By now the client had been assessed by two psychiatrists and deemed to have no mental health problems.  Having calmed down a lot in three weeks since I last saw him he no longer appeared to be at risk of self-harm and was hoping to be released to await trial. The judge spoke to the list office an...

I have just read a report that a magistrate claims to have been directed by the Government to imprison all rioters.  Not sure where this was originally reported. I cannot say whether this is true or not, but if the magistrates at Camberwell Green did accede to such a command then it would seem to be a breach of their oath as JP's as well as a breach of the Rule of Law.

I have just read a BBC report saying that a court has ruled that the police cannot bail anybody for more that 96-hours or 4-days.  The BBC are a little late with this story as it was reported by CrimeLine last Friday, but there you go. The case, called Greater Manchester Police v (1) Hookway, (2) Salford Magistrates' Court , is a judicial review brought by the police following a refusal by a District Judge to grant further time for them to question a murder case suspect. CrimeLine's Andrew Keogh (a well known and highly respected criminal lawyer who provides extensive training for much of the criminal law world) described the judgment as "... one of the most bizarre cases I have ever read... " .  He goes on to say that he understands the case is being appealed, which is not a surprise. Before going on, I should explain for those who do not know that when a person is arrested the police have 24-hours in which to question the suspect and make a decision whether ...

The Sentencing Council has published new guidelines for dealing with assault cases in Magistrates' Courts.  The new guidelines are much more comphrensive than the old ones.  Broadly speaking, offences are split into three levels indicating the seriousness of injuries suffered and the culpability of the offender.  The court must then consider any aggravating or mitigating factors before selecting an appropriate starting point for sentence.  The court then must go through various steps that increase or decrease the sentence before arriving at a decision. Will this increase sentences?  Er... no. Let us look at assault with intent to resist arrest.  Under the old guidelines there were three levels of seriousness and the starting points went: Low level community order; High level community order; and  Crown Court (which means that the case is too serious for the magistrates to sentence because the sentence exceeds their maximum 6-month imprisonment p...