The Defence Brief

Insurance is a contract that remains in force until it expires or is cancelled As you may, or may not, know I specialise in motoring law and most of my work involves defending people accused of drink driving . With the drink driving often come other road traffic offences such as driving while disqualified and driving without insurance. It’s driving without insurance I want to talk about today because I think far too many police officers, solicitors, barristers and judges miss a key legal point when looking at these cases. I’ve received prosecution papers today for somebody accused of driving while disqualified and driving without insurance. The no insurance element is claim that the suspect did not tell the insurer about the disqualification. In his statement, the police officers says, “ [I] contacted [the insurer] who called me back informing me they would not consider the insurance policy valid as there were no convictions disclosed.” Looks like an open an...

  Drink driving law is more complex than many appreciate One thing I have found since specialising in motoring law is that it is an area that is poorly understood by many people, criminal lawyers and judges included. I have heard comments from fellow solicitors that include, “I don’t need any papers to advise him about his case, it’s only drink driving.” And, “there are no defences to drink driving.” Most worryingly I’ve heard more than one court legal adviser tell their magistrates that “it is impossible to avoid a driving ban following a drink driving conviction.” None of these things are true and I hope, through a series of blog posts, to give a brief glimpse into the law of motor vehicles and alcohol. In this first post I think it’s worth spelling out exactly what drink driving is and what needs to be proven to secure a conviction. The first thing to know is that there are two different types of drink driving and they require the prosecution to pro...

As police investigate forensic experts it is ever more important to challenge scientific evidence   You may, or may not, know that I specialise in motoring law and that my practice has a particular emphasis on drink driving, drug driving and the associated offences . Because these offences usually require some scientific enquiry to be conducted to prove guilt, they frequently include forensic evidence and today I want to look at how courts deal with forensic evidence and challenges to it. Let’s assume that somebody has been arrested for drink driving and, for whatever reason, the police have taken blood to assess how much alcohol is in his body. The prosecution will usually provide a document called an SFR1, which is a summary of the scientific examiner’s findings. It is not a document that is admissible itself, although it can be admitted if all parties agree. If a party does not agree to the summary being admitted then the prosecution ask the expert to produce an SFR2...

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...

My typical view of the AXON website Legal practice, at least contentious legal practice, is all about evidence. One side brings a case by putting to the court and their opponent some evidence that they say proves their case. The other side responds by seeking to exclude, undermine or rebut that evidence, usually with evidence of their own. Exchanging evidence, call it discovery or disclosure as you will, is the all-important key to winning a case. Effective disclosure leads one side to thrown in the towel and give up. Failing to disclose leads to a loss in court, at best, and a wasted costs order at worst. Since evidence is so important you’d think somebody would have thought up a way to get that evidence to the people who need to see it quickly and efficiently while preserving the security of the information. I manage it in my firm through the use of encrypted uploads to secure cloud services and software that lets me to email the links to encrypted files that magically d...

Courts have wide powers in dealing with people convicted of drink driving Most people realise that once they are convicted of drink driving the court will take away their driving licence for at least 12 months, but most people aren’t too sure whether the court can also take away their car, it’s probably right to say that most people never think about it at all. The answer is, yes, a court can take your car from you if you are convicted of drink driving. Section 143 of the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000 grants criminal courts the power to deprive a convicted defendant of any rights in property they to the property that was used to commit or facilitate a criminal offence or any property that the defendant intended to use to commit a crime, this specifically includes motor vehicles. It is called a Deprivation Order and means that a court can lawfully deprive you of your car not only if you are convicted of driving with excess alcohol but also if you a...

The Family Court This is a blog about legal aid, but first I want to set out the facts of a case. A few weeks ago, the Court of Appeal heard the case of M (A Child) [2018] EWCA Civ 240 in which a mother appealed against an order that would have permanently separated her from her five-year-old daughter. The facts are that on the 23 rd October 2014 and on the 8 th May 2015 the mother administered to her daughter an epi-pen and subsequently called an ambulance reporting that her daughter was having an allergic reaction. On both occasions, the doctors at the hospital felt that the epi-pen had been unnecessary. It is worth saying that the mother is a qualified nurse who later accepted that she had over-reacted because her motherly concern for her child had overridden her medical training. In 2016, the local authority and mother would sign a threshold document agreeing that the mother’s error had in part been made because she was not aware of the severity of her daughter’...

Blackfriars Crown Court - one of the pilot courts for extended sittings This is a quick update on the blog I posted yesterday about the plan to extend court sitting times from 8am to 8pm in various pilot locations across the country . In that blog, I argued that courts are currently underutilised and that HMCTS should look to resolve that issue before thinking about sitting earlier or later. I have now had a chance to take a snapshot of the Crown Courts across England and Wales today. I have done this in quite a rough and ready way by looking at the lists for each court and counting up the numbers of courts that are either marked as not sitting or that do not appear on the list when they should do if they were sitting today. My findings show that 16.4% of the available courtrooms in Crown Courts across England and Wales are not being used at all today. In addition, there were a significant number where the courts were not sitting before 2pm or where only one case was l...

The Sheffield Palais de Justice Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service (HMCTS) is trialling extended court opening hours in several courts across the country. The courts will be open 8am til 8pm – some will open from 8am til 6.30pm while others will start later and finish at 8.45pm. I’m not entirely clear what time the late finishing courts will start no doubt because I’m one of the many ill-informed lawyers of whom Lord Justice Fulford spoke. Of course, I might be a little more informed if HMCTS actually told us the plan but there you go. The hope for extending court opening hours is that HMCTS will be able to make better use of the existing court buildings, which is fair enough if there is a shortage of courts available to head cases. But, is there a shortage of courtrooms? Monday last, I attended Thames Magistrates’ Court to act as duty solicitor for courtroom 1. I arrived to find that court 1 had been closed for the day due to a lack of staff to operate it. His...

The Criminal Justice System is not the place for vulnerable kids Today I took a break from my usual diet of drink driving  to covered a stint as youth court duty solicitor for someone who couldn’t make it. I haven’t been a youth court duty for quite a long time but it wasn’t too bad. I arrived bright and early at 9.30am ready to collect my papers for the day and get to work. But, there were no papers and nobody in need of representation. I found a room, did some work until lunch time then sat back with a couple of episodes of the X Files for an hour and a half (thank you Amazon Prime). Just as the second episode ended (it was the one with the secretary whose boss was murdered and who is now protecting her from terrorists and his former business partner from beyond the grave) I got a call telling me that there was, at last, somebody for me to see. Dashing up to the CPS room, I collected the papers and then ran to the cells to see my new client. It’s ages since I’ve ...

To answer or not to answer questions is a difficult decision This post was published in 2016 and is out of date. You can read an updated version of this post about whether a suspect should answer questions in a police interview or not by visiting  https://www.londondrinkdrivingsolicitor.co.uk/-Police-questioning-to-answer-or-not-to-answer  

A justice system Kafka would recognise When I read The Trial by Kafka and Nineteen Eighty-Four by Orwell, I took them as warnings of how a bad justice system wrecks lives of those caught up in it. Sadly, some Members of Parliament and the House of Lords seem to view the books more as a guide to how they would like our Criminal Justice System to run. Today, I read of plans to hide the names of accusers and witnesses from defendants in a large number of cases. Victims of sexual offences, such as rape, have had the right to lifelong anonymity for many years now. This means that it is a criminal offence to publish information that will lead to a complainant being identified. A Bill currently being considered by Parliament would extend that anonymity to bar defendants and their lawyers knowing the name of the person accusing them. This would apply not only in sexual offences, as has been reported in the press, but also in violent offences. The anonymity currently offered to ...