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Magistrates’ Court within 21 days. The case would then be sent to the Crown Court. At the first hearing at the Crown Court, they would begin by conducting an inquiry into whether your plea was equivocal, which means incorrect. It is very likely at that hearing that they would want to hear from the court and want to see evidence. So they would adjourn the case for that to happen.
We would then go along on the second occasion and put forward an argument that your plea was incorrect and ought to be removed, and replaced with not guilty. If the Crown Court agree with us, then the case is sent back to the Mag- istrates’ Court for a trial. We may end up having a few hearings.
A
This is complicated. you will need a lawyer to help you with this. First, we have to consider the defence. There are a couple potentially.
Private land. It is not obvious on the face of it that this is private land. Whether land is public or private does not depend on ownership. It depends on whether the public have access. A good example would be a McDonald's drive thru or a pub car park. Very clearly those places are privately owned, yet the general public have access and so they would be deemed to be a public place.
Your parking space depends really if it is off road or not. If it is a parking space on a road, then that is obviously a public place. If it is off road such as a driveway, I don’t think it would be.
Second, it is a defence to being drunk in charge if you can show there is no likelihood of you driving whilst being above the prescribed limit. So in order to defend this, you there are two areas we need to show:
The first is that there was no likelihood of you driving. This is different from intention. Whilst you may not have intended to drive, your intentions may well change when you are drunk and so we need to show the courts that there was absolutely no even remote possibility of you driving. Your witnesses ought to give statements as well as prepare to attend court to support your case. The more evidence we can get the better.
The second half is that there was no likelihood of you driving whilst above the limit. So we have to show that the next time you would have been driving, the alcohol would have reduced to the extent that you were well below the limit.
So you do potentially have a couple of defences, but it is complicated by the fact you pleaded guilty. There is no auto- matic right of appeal. And the sentence you got, 10 points, is the lowest you could have for that offence.
If you want to appeal we must lodge a notice of appeal at the JULY 2022
But time is of the essence. If you want to proceed, we have to get the ball rolling quickly.
Q A
I was pulled over by the police for not having a licence, but I passed in 2011. The DVLA they said that my full licence expired after 10 years. I didn’t know I had to send the licence off.
After finding out. I sorted everything with the DVLA and they gave me my full licence. I’ve received a letter to plead guilty or not guilty and I don’t know what to do. In my eyes I’m not guilty as I passed my test and didn’t know I had to renew the licence and now I have been given my full licence. I have no other offences against me and have always had insurance, MoT and tax on my vehicles.
You should plead guilty. You accept you did not have a licence. However, there are two types of sentence for this offence. One sentence is a fine only and cov- ers cases where there was an administrative error
which means you didn’t have the correct licence – for exam- ple in cases like yours, or where you move address but fail to update the licence details.
The other types of case where you are driving a vehicle you are not authorised to – i.e. driving without the correct licence - for example if you only have a car licence but you are driv- ing a minibus, or have a minibus licence but are driving an HGV. For those offences, you are at risk of both a fine AND 3-6 penalty points.
So if I was you, I would plead guilty and argue for a fine only.
If you need advice on motoring matters please email
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