The offender had used, a friend’s car to commit a drugs offence. A further, third person claimed to be the hirer under a hire purchase agreement. The judge made an order under section 143 refusing to hear evidence about the hiring of the car.
Held: The order was quashed. There was no evidence that the conditions for making the order were satisfied. As to the judge’s failure to hear evidence from the hirer, the court concluded: ‘The judge was not obliged to entertain [the hirer’s] claim. The procedure for her to recover her property is laid down under section 1 of the [1897 Act] and is subject to the important proviso introduced by section 144(1)(b) that she must satisfy the court that she had not consented to the appellant having the car or she did not know and had no reason to suspect that the car was likely to be used for the purposes of crime. The statutory scheme envisages that these questions must be determined not by the Crown Court which imposes the order but by the magistrates court, to which her application would, in the ordinary course, have been made.’
Citations:
[2003] EWCA Crim 307
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – O’Leary International Ltd v North Wales Police Admn 31-May-2012
The company employed drivers to cross the UK. They were stopped and did not have the requisite drivers records. Instead they produced certificates as to having had rest days. These proved false, and the drivers said that the had been produced for . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Criminal Sentencing
Updated: 19 November 2022; Ref: scu.464598