It had not been an abuse of process to prosecute an elderly man for an historic offence of sexual assault which had been committed against a seven-year-old family member. The 23-year delay between the offence and trial did not of itself justify a stay of prosecution, and the judge had been entitled to determine that […]
A person subject to the notification requirements of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 who wished to challenge a decision of a magistrates’ court to uphold a refusal to review the notification requirements should bring an appeal by way of case stated rather than pursue an application for judicial review.
A multiple-counts indictment under the Criminal Procedure Rules 2014 r.14.2(2), which allowed multiple instances of similar offences to be charged as a course of conduct, would not be properly drafted unless it specified a minimum number of occasions on which the offending was alleged to have happened. Otherwise, where a defendant was convicted on such […]
It was unjust for a Crown Court judge to order that a foreign travel order begin afresh from the date on which he had dismissed an appeal by an offender against that order. The order was to run from the date on which it had originally been made.
An application for a writ of habeas corpus by a prisoner who had been sentenced to imprisonment for public protection when his offence pre-dated the coming into force of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 failed. The sentencing judge had had competent jurisdiction to direct both imprisonment and a minimum term. Her order could not, therefore, […]
A judge had not erred in stating that an appellant’s bad character had been agreed during a rape trial in which both the appellant and victim had impugned each other in their evidence. The conviction was safe despite the fact that allegations of past violence by the appellant had been made. The judge’s direction had […]
A judge had been right to refuse severance of a defendant’s indictment for child abduction from his co-defendants’ additional indictments for rape. The jury had not misunderstood the scope or nature of the case against the defendant, they had been directed carefully and the summing up had been clear.
There was no need for the Sexual Offences Act 2003 to contain express wording to enable a person who was subject to a sexual offences prevention order to be required to wear an electronic monitoring device or tag when he was away from his residence. The interference with the person’s rights under the ECHR art.8 […]
A taxi driver’s conviction for a single offence of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old passenger was not unsafe where the driver had been suffering from undiagnosed diabetes at the time of his police interview and, unbeknown to all, might have been hypoglycaemic. On the facts, the driver’s answers in police interview could not be regarded as […]
A conviction for sexual assault was safe where an offender’s original solicitors had failed to obtain medical evidence showing that he was a diabetic and suggesting that his medical condition affected the answers he had given in interview, during which he had made partial admissions. The jury had been persuaded by the evidence the complainant […]
