Newnit posted a reply ‘unless your wife has been charged with both speeding and failure to furnish’…
I attach the ‘intention to prosecute’ in which the offence is excess speed. I also attach the charge sheet which only ‘refers failure to identify’. Is she being charged with both offences? If both charges are valid, could a deal admitting the offence be open to her. How would we do this? Writing directly to the Court?
Well of course the intention to prosecute only contained the one (speeding) allegation as the second offence couldn't have been committed when that was sent, but its clearly on the charge sheet. The charge sheet appears to only include the failing to furnish, so no, not being dual charged, while that doesn't make the plea deal impossible, it is all but the case as the prosecutor would have to agree (somewhat dubiously) and out of time speeding charge for your wife to accept.
It is what is mentioned on the "Single Justice Procedure Notice" which determines the offence(s) she has to answer. The Notice of Intended Prosecution (NIP) will obviously only include the speeding allegation because at that point that was the only offence that the police suspected had occurred. The "Fail to Provide Driver's Details" offence is not committed until 28 days after the request was served and no NIP is required for that offence.
As I said earlier, your wife's case is not the same as somebody who either did not receive or did not respond to a s172 request. In those circumstances prosecutors will usually agree to accept a guilty plea to speeding on the understanding that the s172 charge is dropped. It is a tried and tested strategy which is recommended frequently on this forum (and which is invariably successful). Your wife, however, has already stated categorically that she could not establish who was driving.
Of course, as Rookie suggests, her "diligence" in trying to identify the driver need not end because she has been charged with failing to do so. She could approach the prosecutor at her Case Management hearing and say that her diligence has been rewarded and she can now accept that she was driving. What she should emphasise is that she will only plead guilty to speeding providing the s172 charge is dropped. This is important. At present she cannot be convicted of speeding as there is no evidence she was driving. If she pleads guilty to it she will receive three points for that and, since she has little in the way of a defence to the s172 charge, probably six for that in addition. Whether this would be acceptable to a prosecutor in your wife's circumstances, especially as Rookie mentions, as she has not been "dual charged", I don't know. But if she doesn't ask she won't get.
By the way, your registration number is visible in the NIP you posted up.
By the way, your registration number is visible in the NIP you posted up.
As indeed is his wife's name and address.
So, in an entire week or travelling, there is no trace whatsoever of a spedning pattern? No breaks/food, no fuel refills etc etc?
Good luck with that defence............
For the sake of completeness, and to avoid others checking,whilst an SJPN can include multiple charge sheets, the date of the written charge (for the s. 172 offence) is beyond the 6 month limit for the speeding offence, so that will not have been included on a separate sheet.
Getting the prosecution and court to agree to drop the lawfully charged offence in return for pleading guilty to a charge that has not been issued and which the court would not be entitled to try is apparently common practice if the accused is a serving cabinet minister. For anyone else, not so much.
If a deal is attempted in front of the bench and rejected, I would suggest that any s. 172 defence would necessarily fail unless you persuade the bench to recuse themselves on the basis that they would have reason to disbelieve you.
So, in an entire week or travelling, there is no trace whatsoever of a spedning pattern? No breaks/food, no fuel refills etc etc?
Good luck with that defence............
What would a spending pattern prove in this case, if they were both in the same vehicle at the time? I don't think the OP has attempted to offer it up as a defence anyway.
What would a spending pattern prove in this case, if they were both in the same vehicle at the time?
Well it might help in my case. Whenever Mrs NJ and I are on a trip where the driving is shared, the passenger usually gets out to pay for petrol, newspapers, sandwiches etc. By looking at which credit card was used we could tell with a reasonable degree of certainty who was driving when such purchases were made and it may help identify who was driving at a particular time.
Of course that would not be useful to everybody but the idea here is to give the OP a taste of what might be done.
So if you swap drivers at the same time as getting fuel, is the passenger paying or the driver?
You are right that it wouldn't be useful to everyone. Me, for example. Whoever pays on our journeys is decided by who goes into the shop. If she wants a coffee or something, she might go in while I refuel. If she doesn't, I'll go in and pay.
If my wife and I are sharing driving duties on a long drive we normally swap over at service stations, filling stations, coffee shops etc. But there is no regular pattern as to whether it's the outgoing driver or outgoing passenger who pays for food, fuel and drinks etc.
However, knowing where a particular camera was in respect to service stations etc would probably help us remember who was driving at a particular point. Receipts might possibly help but I'm not convinced...
Mobile phone records would be of more use assuming the passenger (and not the driver) had used their 'phone around the relevant point of the journey.
But apart from those possibilities, if two people can't remember who was driving then they can't remember who was driving.
(We drive from Norfolk to the Highlands of Scotland - and return - twice a year. Next time we'll keep a note of who drove when. Especially on the A9...)
This is all very interesting but what matters is the diligence the defendant actually exercised, not hypothetical possibilities.
Particularly as the NIP was from Devon & Cornwall - so one hell of a (memorable!) detour on the route from Norfolk to the Highlands!
Particularly as the NIP was from Devon & Cornwall - so one hell of a (memorable!) detour on the route from Norfolk to the Highlands!
You have the OP mixed up with ManxTom's reply.. OP went to Cornwall
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