Court letter for speeding offence

JamoLew

Mickey666 said:

Manxman_in_exile said:

Mickey666 said:

Surely pleading guilty to the speeding charge is effectively the same identifying the driver . . . otherwise perjury must be involved, and you certainly DON'T want to go there!

But I agree about pleading not guilty to the 'failing to identify' charge, simply on the basis that no one can fail do do something they haven't been asked to do (in this case because the NIP was not received).  

I fear your thinking is as flawed on this as you are on VW dieselgate and the reasons why people buy insurance.

The police will be able to prove that a s172 request was sent to the OP, and the Interpretation Act then creates a rebuttable presumption that that request was delivered to the OP two working days later.  If the OP has not responded to this request, they will only be able to escape conviction for failing to identify the driver by proving that they never received the request - which is very difficult to establish in court otherwise everybody would say they never received it.  I'm sure many people have been convicted of failing to identify even though they've never received a request to do so and they have not been correctly advised.

As above - the OP should plead not guilty to both charges and in court on the day offer to plead guilty to the speeding if, and only if, the prosecution drops the failure to identify charge.  (Of course, the OP can only plead guilty to the speeding if they were in fact the driver on the day).

If all that is true, why on earth would the prosecution drop the failing to identify charge?  

Pleading not guilty on both charges just to get a court date and then changing your plea on just the speeding charge when that alone effectively identifies the driver all seems a bit of a rigmarole and a waste of court time.

They can only convict on one of the charges.

Doing a deal for a lesser charge is common practice

Plenty of discussion and cases on Pepipoo

TadleyBaggie

Take this to Pepipoo, too many posters on here giving conflicting advice.

TooManyPoints

If all that is true, why on earth would the prosecution drop the failing to identify charge? 

Because that's what's done up and down the land each and every day. Prosecutors are familiar with it; Magistrates and their Legal Advisors are familiar with it. In some courts the Magistrates may even ask the prosecutor if he is prepared to do the deal before pleas are entered or the prosecutor may offer it without prompting. You don't just go to court and change your plea to speeding. You go and offer to plead guilty to speeding only if the FtF charge is dropped. Provided you are polite the prosecutor will accept your offer. The reason why,  is that, provided they are sure you are not trying to evade justice, they are perfectly happy to prosecute only the underlying offence. They have little interest in prosecuting you for an administrative error or because something was lost in the post. There's no question of perjury involved.  

The prosecution for speeding cannot succeed without a driver being formally identified. Take a look on Pepipoo and you will see this advice rendered day in, day out, and many reports back that the process was a success. There has been only one recorded failure. That was when the defendant was, shall we say, less than polite to the prosecutor. He tried to tell him what he could and couldn't do. So he showed him.

Manxman_in_exile

TadleyBaggie said:

Take this to Pepipoo, too many posters on here giving conflicting advice.

Is that necessary?  Only one poster has given wrong advice and that was EssexExile.  Everybody else has given the correct advice haven't they?

(Obviously I'm not counting Mickey666 as they clearly don't understand what they're talking about... )

EssexExile

TooManyPoints said:

Why does he need to phone the court?

If you come on a forum you'll get loads of answers, some right, some wrong, who knows which is which? The court deal with this sort of thing every day, different courts have different procedures. So phone the court which sent the letter and ask what to do.

TooManyPoints

If he rings the court he will speak to a receptionist. They often give advice which is either misleading or plainly incorrect. They are not qualified to give advice on pleas and nor should they do so - but many will. There have been many reports of people being told "Oh, simply plead guilty to the speeding and they'll drop the FtF." And further reports of people taking that advice and ending up with nine points. Not a good idea. The process outlined above  (to offer the "deal") is the only certain way of minimising the damage. The worst that can happen is the defendant is convicted of FtF and no evidence offered for speeding (because they don't have the evidence to support who was driving). That is bad enough but it won't happen if the OP adopts the recommended process. All courts are cognisant of this procedure. The only difference lately is that because of Covid such matters are dealt with by phone. But it still needs a Not Guilty plea to both charges to initiate the process. The "deal" is within the gift of the prosecutor, not the court.

neilmcl

EssexExile said:

TooManyPoints said:

Why does he need to phone the court?

If you come on a forum you'll get loads of answers, some right, some wrong, who knows which is which? The court deal with this sort of thing every day, different courts have different procedures. So phone the court which sent the letter and ask what to do.

The court are not going to give the correct advice that he was given in the first reply. They cannot advise on the best approach in plead deals to minimise an outcome. 

ontheroad1970

neilmcl said:

EssexExile said:

TooManyPoints said:

Why does he need to phone the court?

If you come on a forum you'll get loads of answers, some right, some wrong, who knows which is which? The court deal with this sort of thing every day, different courts have different procedures. So phone the court which sent the letter and ask what to do.

The court are not going to give the correct advice that he was given in the first reply. They cannot advise on the best approach in plead deals to minimise an outcome. 

Even if they do know, they would be unwilling as otherwise they would be a court official effectively giving legal advice which they wouldn't be willing or able to give.

TadleyBaggie

The court will probably not know anything about the case, apart from it has been listed. Any deal to get the S172 offence dropped needs to be done with the prosecutor and there is a good chance he/she will not even see the case details until the morning of the trial.