Success story!

I want to share this - I'm so pleased with myself Bit of a long story, bear with me, as the detail is critical.

I've just got a client off a failure to identify a driver charge under section 172 Road Traffic Act. It'a a serious offence - 3 points and a fine on Level 3 - ie up to £1,000. And mags courts do exercise this whacking great fine power, particularly if convicted after a not guilty plea.

Client was driving a works truck when rear-ended by another wagon, which failed to stop. So client chased to get reg number and went through a camera in a 40 at 46. However the other driver jumped some lights and that was the end of that. Client called the police but they weren't very interested.

So a request arrives at works to identify the driver, and they identified my bloke. The ticket office claimed that they wrote to my bloke to confirm the ID. He didn't reply - because he says he never received anything. They then claim they sent a reminder about a month later - again no reply, cos client is adamant he didn't receive anything. All this was back in February - March.

Then, in September, client gets a summons from the Mags, saying he failed to ID the driver. This is the first he knew about any prosecution. The mags court or the police (not clear which) sent him the relevant statements, which he passed to me. On the face of it, cut and dried EXCEPT that the police officer's statement (the PC responsible for the ticket issue process) was missing one exhibit, being the internal report on the ticket issue process.

Next, I received the advance info from the CPS - basically the prosecution case. It had the missing exhibit. And there on the last of 4 pages of the internal report were the magic words 'First NIP not sent due to error'.

So I wrote to the CPS to request an explanation. But they replied only a few days before I had to go to the first hearing as the Court had already fixed the date.

They replied with a witness statement from the computer operator explaining that she got the drivers details from DVLA and made a mistake in inputting the details onto the NIP but that on checking the error was noticed (a few hours later) and the NIP was issued that same day.

Well this made me deeply suspicious. I was amazed that the transfer of data is MANUAL. Get that, manual data transfer!!!

The hearing was effectively administrative - I was saying that we were not ready to proceed cos I hadn't had time to take full instructions and to serve a Defence Statement under section 6 Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act. Well there was some debate over this, the mags sensibly retired, so I had a bit of a barney with the Court clerk who was adamant that I had no defence, that there was no need for a Defence Statement as the issues were straightforward. I said that there was a plain doubt over the integrity of the process. He didn't understand what I was talking about. It turned out that he didn't have the exhibit to the police statement - the one that was missing first time round - so I showed him and the penny dropped. We settled a revised trial date for 25 November, I said I insisted on having the PC and the civilian clerk in the ticket office at the hearing so I could cross-examine them, he huffed and puffed a bit and away we went.

There was plainly doubt over the integrity of the procedure, and the evidence was far from convincing. I told the prosecutor at the first hearing as much and told him that it was not satisfactory that even the Court did not have the correct evidence. I also made it clear that I would major on the process deficiency, and also on the failure to produce the correct exhibit at the outset.

So we wait for the second hearing.

Anyway, after all this, I got a letter from the CPS today - they have decided that there is insufficient evidence and that the case is being dropped. WOOOOOHOOOOOO!!!!!!

And even better, client was never NIP'ed for the speeding and now they're out of time. Bloke has had a clean licence for over 20 years - and as a trucker he needs a clean licence.

So - if you are on the sharp end of a similar summons - FFS read the evidence, every single word of it, and don't take it lying down. Especially look for missing documents!

And I get costs too

'First NIP not sent due to error' will be someone's epitaph.... I could name and shame but I won't. Suffice to say that this was a police force in the north-west of England.

Nicely done! Impressive attention to detail, although I guess that kinda comes with the job but still

Nice one! Did said North-Western police force ever catch the other party?

Originally Posted by Ed

So I wrote to the CPS to request an explanation. But they replied only a few days before I had to go to the first hearing as the Court had already fixed the date.

I'm amazed that people (particularly state-run organisations, who should know better) still try the 'trick' of sending stuff last minute before the hearing so you can't respond/don't have time to think about it. I was under the impression the courts took a very dim view of this in general and often threw cases out rather than rescheduling (or passing the costs of rescheduling to the parties responsible) in the case of minor crimes?

Well done Ed.

congrats!!

Originally Posted by rthoms

Nice one! Did said North-Western police force ever catch the other party?

Nope.

Failed all round

Originally Posted by Ed

I want to share this - I'm so pleased with myself Bit of a long story, bear with me, as the detail is critical.

I've just got a client off a failure to identify a driver charge under section 172 Road Traffic Act. It'a a serious offence - 3 points and a fine on Level 3 - ie up to £1,000. And mags courts do exercise this whacking great fine power, particularly if convicted after a not guilty plea.

Client was driving a works truck when rear-ended by another wagon, which failed to stop. So client chased to get reg number and went through a camera in a 40 at 46. However the other driver jumped some lights and that was the end of that. Client called the police but they weren't very interested.

So a request arrives at works to identify the driver, and they identified my bloke. The ticket office claimed that they wrote to my bloke to confirm the ID. He didn't reply - because he says he never received anything. They then claim they sent a reminder about a month later - again no reply, cos client is adamant he didn't receive anything. All this was back in February - March.

Then, in September, client gets a summons from the Mags, saying he failed to ID the driver. This is the first he knew about any prosecution. The mags court or the police (not clear which) sent him the relevant statements, which he passed to me. On the face of it, cut and dried EXCEPT that the police officer's statement (the PC responsible for the ticket issue process) was missing one exhibit, being the internal report on the ticket issue process.

Next, I received the advance info from the CPS - basically the prosecution case. It had the missing exhibit. And there on the last of 4 pages of the internal report were the magic words 'First NIP not sent due to error'.

So I wrote to the CPS to request an explanation. But they replied only a few days before I had to go to the first hearing as the Court had already fixed the date.

They replied with a witness statement from the computer operator explaining that she got the drivers details from DVLA and made a mistake in inputting the details onto the NIP but that on checking the error was noticed (a few hours later) and the NIP was issued that same day.

Well this made me deeply suspicious. I was amazed that the transfer of data is MANUAL. Get that, manual data transfer!!!

The hearing was effectively administrative - I was saying that we were not ready to proceed cos I hadn't had time to take full instructions and to serve a Defence Statement under section 6 Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act. Well there was some debate over this, the mags sensibly retired, so I had a bit of a barney with the Court clerk who was adamant that I had no defence, that there was no need for a Defence Statement as the issues were straightforward. I said that there was a plain doubt over the integrity of the process. He didn't understand what I was talking about. It turned out that he didn't have the exhibit to the police statement - the one that was missing first time round - so I showed him and the penny dropped. We settled a revised trial date for 25 November, I said I insisted on having the PC and the civilian clerk in the ticket office at the hearing so I could cross-examine them, he huffed and puffed a bit and away we went.

There was plainly doubt over the integrity of the procedure, and the evidence was far from convincing. I told the prosecutor at the first hearing as much and told him that it was not satisfactory that even the Court did not have the correct evidence. I also made it clear that I would major on the process deficiency, and also on the failure to produce the correct exhibit at the outset.

So we wait for the second hearing.

Anyway, after all this, I got a letter from the CPS today - they have decided that there is insufficient evidence and that the case is being dropped. WOOOOOHOOOOOO!!!!!!

And even better, client was never NIP'ed for the speeding and now they're out of time. Bloke has had a clean licence for over 20 years - and as a trucker he needs a clean licence.

So - if you are on the sharp end of a similar summons - FFS read the evidence, every single word of it, and don't take it lying down. Especially look for missing documents!

And I get costs too

'First NIP not sent due to error' will be someone's epitaph.... I could name and shame but I won't. Suffice to say that this was a police force in the north-west of England.

good work that man!! i like these sorts of stories!!

Curious - are requests for identity not sent by recorded delivery or somesuch then? Because if I've understood this, the basic charge is "you failed to provide information when requested", to which the defence of "to my knowledge you didn't request it" is applied; at that stage the Police/CPS/Whoever say "yes we did, here look we processed it on our computer, here's the record". But wouldn't that mean that every time Royal Mail fail to deliver a regular non recorded letter, the recipient of that letter is deemed guilty of a crime?

Curious part deux - is there another way of saying "i got a client off"? Never liked that phrase as it implies the client was guilty but with super lawyer powers he got away with it. Rather than "client was innocent and super lawyer powers made that plain to see".

[yorkie_chris]

Or you could even say "the police were trying to f##k an innocent bloke over to get their numbers up, and super lawyer powers gave them a bloody nose"

Well done, congratulations.