Free Traffic Legal Advice
Live cases legal advice => Speeding and other criminal offences => Topic started by: DB40 on July 12, 2024, 02:05:58 pm
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One of the problems with free legal advice, is that those seeking it often value it, and perhaps the time of those providing it, accordingly.
You were told, in plain English that if you provided the "mitigation" that you proposed that the court ought to reject your guilty plea as it amounted to a defence. You chose not to follow that advice. That is your choice.
You posted that you did not understand the advice given, as if that was our problem. I assured you that it was not. To most people, the solution to struggling to understand advice given is variously to read it again until you do understand, or seek specific clarification on the bits that you can't understand.
After deciding not to follow the advice given, you came back to ask why the court had rejected your plea. We had already told you this before you decided to ignore our advice. You were asking a question that has already been answered.
You seem to think that those pointing out the issues with your posting are rude. I would suggest that the contempt you have shown to those trying to help you with your legal problem is what is rude.
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Us = husband and I
Incorrect, you're not listening. You were told this twice - this is why people are telling you to read posts!
Only one of you has a court date, the other does not, so when you said 'giving us a court date' that can't be both of you, it can only be one of you so 'us' cannot be your husband and you. Likewise your 'we' can't be both of you looking for advice as only the person named needs it, the other has no damned use for it.
So how about you explain what is actually happening?
And stop multiple positing, if you want to add after posting, use Modify not a new post please.
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I am beyond appreciative of all the advice offered, but for the non-advice posters I would just like to point out that it is not necessary to point out to me how they are not responsible for my level of understanding (of course not) or that I should try reading the post (I did, but needed further clarification as I did not understand fully - and yes, that is my responsibility, no one else’s). I am not educated to any significant level nor am I knowledgeable about legal matters. I humbly ask for advice because I am clueless and probably not clever enough to understand what is about to happen. Thanks so much for all your help everyone and hopefully this may be of help to others who may one day find themselves in the same position. I’ll update once we have been to court
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Us = husband and I. I am aware that only one of us is being charged but it’s very much a family problem (which I caused as I am the one who committed the original speeding offence), I did not think this would cause confusion but apologies if it did
They = the police
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Is this because we also said that a) we replied to the police letter as soon as we had it b) we had no intention to evade responsibility for the speeding offence c) we believe the mail got lost and offered a possible explanation along with evidence such as previous neighbours confirming same happened to them on two occasions
I can only assume this has been regarded as an attempt to pervert the course of justice as a previous poster warned me about
Try reading the rest of that post - the bit where that poster told you why this would happen.
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Update: pleaded guilty, court responded to say that they are unable to accept our plea of guilty and gave us a court date. Also said we should consider seeking legal advice which I hope is just a standard line.
I’m so confused, they say husband was guilty, he accepts and pleads guilty, and now they are unable to accept that plea? Is this because we also said that a) we replied to the police letter as soon as we had it b) we had no intention to evade responsibility for the speeding offence c) we believe the mail got lost and offered a possible explanation along with evidence such as previous neighbours confirming same happened to them on two occasions
I can only assume this has been regarded as an attempt to pervert the course of justice as a previous poster warned me about
Please stop using "we" and "us", it only confuses matters. There is no "we" or "us": only one person is involved, and that presumably is your husband.
Also, "they say husband was guilty". Who is "they"? The court certainly won't say that at this stage, otherwise there would be no point in having courts.
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I can only assume this has been regarded as an attempt to pervert the course of justice as a previous poster warned me about
No it hasn't.
Pleading not guilty to a charge cannot be seen as PCoJ. If it was, everybody who did so but who was subsequently convicted would be charged with that offence and that clearly doesn't happen.
What your husband has written indicates to the court that he may not be guilty. That is why his plea has been declined. The circumstances need to be explored a little more and that is what will happen at his hearing.
You should bear in mind that there is no "we" or "us" involved in this. Only one of you faces the charge.
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Update: pleaded guilty, court responded to say that they are unable to accept our plea of guilty and gave us a court date. Also said we should consider seeking legal advice which I hope is just a standard line.
I’m so confused, they say husband was guilty, he accepts and pleads guilty, and now they are unable to accept that plea? Is this because we also said that a) we replied to the police letter as soon as we had it b) we had no intention to evade responsibility for the speeding offence c) we believe the mail got lost and offered a possible explanation along with evidence such as previous neighbours confirming same happened to them on two occasions
I can only assume this has been regarded as an attempt to pervert the course of justice as a previous poster warned me about
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It is a criminal offence. However, it is not a recordable offence, which means it doesn’t form part of a person’s criminal record.
Also most countries consider minor motoring offences irrelevant for VISA purposes, as I love the wording I'll use the American example, it's not a 'crime of moral turpitude'.
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It is a criminal offence. However, it is not a recordable offence, which means it doesn’t form part of a person’s criminal record.
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@NewJudge thank you, it won’t be life changing if it isn’t a criminal offence, so this forum has already been immensely helpful in putting my racing mind at some ease.
It comes down to whether we can prove that the letters didn’t reach us. I appreciate that this won’t be easy. While I have plenty of proof that couriers can’t find us it’s not as easy with the Royal Mail. It happened once about four years ago but I have no written proof of this.
Personally I think it’s much more likely that our neighbours (both old and new) or the builders/new business in the building grabbed our mail by mistake and returned it at some later point. Not sure we can prove this happened.
Food for thought.
Thanks so much everyone!
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The comment about a guilty plea potentially being tantamount to perverting the course of justice came from a previous poster. I probably misunderstood but basically trying to enter mitigating factors in the hopes of the court converting a guilty plea to not guilty could be viewed as an attempt to pervert the course of justice.
Whilst I would not argue with Andy's interpretation of the law (he knows much more about these things than I do) personally I doubt that would happen to an unrepresented defendant in a Magistrates' Court. A defendant representing himself is not expected to know such points of law and whilst a guilty plea for the sake of expediency is often refused by a court, I would think the worst that would happen would be just that.
There is a defence to the charge which says this:
“the person on whom the notice is served shall not be guilty of an offence under this section if he shows either that he gave the information as soon as reasonably practicable after the end of that period or that it has not been reasonably practicable for him to give it.”
It was not “reasonably practicable” for your husband to give the information within the time allowed as he had not received the request by the time that period had expired. However, he gave the information as soon as it was reasonably practicable for him to do so (i.e. as soon as he received the request).
The task he will have is convincing the court that the request was not received in time. You do seem to have quite catalogue of reasons why your post may well suffer problems. If he does decide to defend the charge it would certainly be beneficial If he could provide some independent evidence of this, perhaps from neighbours or even the Post Office.
In the event he decides to plead guilty it is unlikely that any mitigation will significantly influence the sentence. The offence carries a fixed six points and the level of the fine is fairly prescriptive. So I think really the decision is whether to plead not guilty and trying to convince he court that the request was received late, or to plead guilty and get the guaranteed reduction in the financial penalty that comes with that.
This is a life changing event and I am devastated.
Of course I don't know your personal circumstances but I imagine there are few people for whom this would prove to be a "life changing event". Whilst it is not the least serious of traffic offences, it is fairly minor in the scheme of things and attracts just a fine and penalty points, though you will see quite an increase in insurance premiums for a few years. How else do you suspect it will change your lives?
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Husband is facing a criminal record over this. I know he is free to enter either plea, but with this much hanging in the balance I am just trying to find the best course of action.
This could ruin so much for us. I think he even risks being fired from his job should this happen, I know nobody cares and we have no way of proving we didn’t receive these letters but we genuinely didn’t.
This is a life changing event and
I am devastated.
If your husband is found or pleads guilty to failing to nominate the driver, he will have points on his licence, and will have to pay a fine, a surcharge and costs.
What he will NOT have is a criminal record.
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The comment about a guilty plea potentially being tantamount to perverting the course of justice came from a previous poster. I probably misunderstood but basically trying to enter mitigating factors in the hopes of the court converting a guilty plea to not guilty could be viewed as an attempt to pervert the course of justice.
So a guilty plea should be made without further comment to eliminate this risk
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Husband is facing a criminal record over this. I know he is free to enter either plea, but with this much hanging in the balance I am just trying to find the best course of action.
This could ruin so much for us. I think he even risks being fired from his job should this happen, I know nobody cares and we have no way of proving we didn’t receive these letters but we genuinely didn’t.
This is a life changing event and
I am devastated.
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Based on what you write it is my understanding that the only risk free option for us is to plead not guilty and go to court, as pleading guilty could be seen as perverting the court of justice, which sounds like it would lead to an even worse outcome.
You are free to plead guilty or not guilty, that would never be seen as perverting the course of justice under any circumstances. However presenting false evidence (only applicable to not guilty) could amount to perjury.
Can you cite authority for that proposition?
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Based on what you write it is my understanding that the only risk free option for us is to plead not guilty and go to court, as pleading guilty could be seen as perverting the court of justice, which sounds like it would lead to an even worse outcome.
You are free to plead guilty or not guilty, that would never be seen as perverting the course of justice under any circumstances. However presenting false evidence (only applicable to not guilty) could amount to perjury.
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@andy_foster Thank you again for taking the time to respond. Of course you are not responsible for my level of understanding - I am not an educated person - and I did not mean to criticise or offend you in any way. This is new to me and as you kindly took the time to respond to my initial question I thought you wouldn’t mind a follow up question.
Based on what you write it is my understanding that the only risk free option for us is to plead not guilty and go to court, as pleading guilty could be seen as perverting the court of justice, which sounds like it would lead to an even worse outcome.
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We returned the form asap nominating me
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Gosh so would both my husband and I get points? Me 3 points for the speeding and husband 6 points for not responding to a letter (which we had no chance to respond any earlier to)
If your husband's response had been received in time, you would have received a letter in your own name, asking you to confirm that you were driving. Since you have not, there is no evidence on which to convict you of speeding.
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More to the point I’m struggling to understand your advice.
Please see the comment in my sig.
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Gosh so would both my husband and I get points? Me 3 points for the speeding and husband 6 points for not responding to a letter (which we had no chance to respond any earlier to)
This is really harsh I have to say. We did the absolute best we could under the circumstances and the thought of our cost of living increasing further is too much to bear. Plus the fine. I’m going to be sick
More to the point I’m struggling to understand your advice. We should not plead guilty, as that would be seen as perverting the course of justice? I thought the courts hated it when people plead not guilty as in their eyes he most definitely is: as far as they are concerned they sent this out on time and we didn’t respond.
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The law requires the information to be provided within 28 days beginning with the date of service (unless it was not reasonably practicable to do so).
Service is when the notice is delivered to the addressee's last known address. It is deemed to have been effected 2 working days after posting unless the contrary is proven.
If you plead guilty but mention in mitigation that the notice was delivered late and that you responded as soon as possible afterwards, the court ought to reject your plea and enter a plea of not guilty on your behalf.
To defend this, you would have to persuade the court, on the balance of probabilities (more likely than not), that the notice was delivered late/misdelivered.
If you plead guilty to lessen the punishment (other than the question of whether that would constitute perverting the course of justice), you would receive a 1/3 discount off the fine - so would face 6 points (MS90 endorsement code - which is likely to see insurance go up), a fine of 1 week's relevant weekly income (after tax and NI), 40% surcharge and ~£90 prosecution costs.
If you defend and win, no fine, no points, no costs.
If you defend and lose, would lose discount on fine (and surcharge on fine), so 1.5 x RWI and 40% of that, and prosecution costs would be ~£620.
As regards defending, independent/official documentary evidence of ongoing postal issues is worth its weight in gold - although the primary evidence would be your testimony.
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Thanks for your reply. It’s the only offence (failure to give info relating to the identification of the driver - I assume that’s the s. 172)
I understand that the court won’t dismiss the case. At this point I’m trying to educate myself on whether pleading guilty but asking them to consider the circumstances is better than pleading not guilty (as we did reply and give the info to the police who acknowledged receipt)
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This is an honest mistake and we want the court to throw this case out!
And I want to wake up next to Alyson Hannigan, but it doesn't work like that.
Fully prepared to take the consequences of the speeding fine (I realise this is a separate matter to the offence of not answering their letters). What risks are attached to disputing this please?
It depends on what the options are. Is the s. 172 offence the only charge, or has he been charged with the speeding offence as well?
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I’m hoping that the fact that we replied as soon as we had the fine will be in our favour, illustrating that we had zero intent of evading this matter.
And also that there is some history of mail going missing.
I won’t bore any readers with further details but our neighbours in the other flat in the building moved out around that time, and they sent someone (their cleaner I believe) around to collect their mail. At least once one of our letters seemed to have been opened by mistake as it was sellotaped and also late so I’m guessing maybe they accidentally took it with them. Who knows if the same could have happened with this letter, I can never prove that but it’s one of my theories
Any advice would be much appreciated.
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We have a letter from the court re failure to provide information re speeding but we received the initial speeding fine late. We immediately replied, nominating the driver (me, husband is RK) only to receive a letter from the police saying we were too late and that my husband will have to appear in court now.
This is an honest mistake and we want the court to throw this case out! Fully prepared to take the consequences of the speeding fine (I realise this is a separate matter to the offence of not answering their letters). What risks are attached to disputing this please? Details (long…) below.
Our address is difficult to find. It is off a main road in a square but the address is the main road despite our house being on a square with a different name. Our address is something like Main Road 10-12, flat 2. But in reality the house is on Square X. To confuse things further, there is a Main Road 10 and also a Main Road 12 which are a bit further down the road. We frequently get the neighbours mail and vice versa. I can prove this to some extent (complaints re non delivery of items & subsequent refunds etc). At the time of the speeding offence there were also works going on at a commercial address in our building, with a separate entrance on the main road. Some of the new businesses deliveries were mistakenly left with us during this time. I don’t know if the reverse also happened as there were only various workmen coming and going at the time, no sign of the business owner.
This happens all the time. I can never order anything online without following up with instructions on how to find us or I never receive anything. Obviously the postman is much more reliable than the couriers but nobody is 100% perfect.