NIP not received genuinely - help

Okell

TooManyPoints said:

Unless he is foolish enough to plead guilty to it, the speeding charge is a non-runner and the prosecution will offer no evidence.

My point was that I think @Mildly_Miffed has missed out a rather important word -  "not" - that might confuse the OP...

TooManyPoints

Yes Agreed!  

ThorOdinson

Seems fairly straightforward. Defence is you didn't get the letter, no evidence to did, only a presumption.

You have the fact that you responded to the other one as evidence that you were not trying to avoid prosecution or identifying the driver, who was not you.

It's a waste of everyone's time, but you have to go through the process and hope that the court is fair.

Mildly_Miffed

Okell said:

TooManyPoints said:

Unless he is foolish enough to plead guilty to it, the speeding charge is a non-runner and the prosecution will offer no evidence.

My point was that I think @Mildly_Miffed has missed out a rather important word -  "not" - that might confuse the OP...

Mea culpa...

(I'm SURE it was there as I was typing...)

TooManyPoints

It's a waste of everyone's time,…

Why is it a waste of everyone’s time? What else do you suggest the police do, then?

…but you have to go through the process and hope that the court is fair.

I think you are trivialising this.

The “due process” which the OP has to endure to defend the charge is a criminal trial. The prosecution enjoys the “presumption of service” to make its case and so will almost certainly succeed without a successful defence

Courts are naturally sceptical of claims which, if successful, mean prosecution for speeding or for the more serious charge of “failing to provide driver’s details” cannot succeed. If it was simply a case of turning up to say “Didn’t receive the letter” everybody would do it and the mechanism for prosecuting speeding offences where the driver was not stopped at the time would be hopelessly ineffective. 

So long as the police can satisfy the court that the letter was posted, the court can rely on the presumption that it was properly served and so they can convict. The only thing the defendant can cast doubt on is whether it was posted (a task with which  I believe he would struggle).  

To succeed he has to prove “on the balance of probabilities” (i.e. more likely than not) that the request was not received. The only evidence he has is his own testimony to that effect coupled with the fact that he has occasionally received wrongly delivered letters (for which he would need to provide evidence for his testimony to have any strength).

The court may well side with him, though I would say that more often than not, in his position they would not. But he needs to know the risks involved with maintaining a Not Guilty plea together with the obstacles he has to overcome to secure his acquittal.

born_again

ThorOdinson said:

Seems fairly straightforward. Defence is you didn't get the letter, no evidence to did, only a presumption.

You have the fact that you responded to the other one as evidence that you were not trying to avoid prosecution or identifying the driver, who was not you.

It's a waste of everyone's time, but you have to go through the process and hope that the court is fair.

The presumption that you received it is not made by the police. It is enshrined in law (Interpretation Act, 1978, Section 7)
Failed on that grounds.

You can not prove a negative.