The appellant challenged his conviction and sentence for breacjh of and anti-social behaviour order. He had represented himself, bt having insisted that he would only do so naked, he had been tried in absentia.
Held: ‘, were the Appellant to have appeared naked in front of the jury it would have been a further breach of the Anti-social Behaviour Order and that is the end of the argument. That a court should contemplate concurrence with the commission of a criminal offence during proceedings is a bizarre notion and, without more, fatal to the Appellant’s submissions. The suggestion that the judge ‘ought to have been very slow, in the absence of any disruptive behaviour, to set any conditions about how he should dress’ misses the point. The judge could not with propriety have put herself in the position of agreeing to the commission of a crime. The Anti-social Behaviour Order was in place and it prohibited behaviour the applicant sought to legitimise.’
[2015] EWCA Crim 1079
Bailii
England and Wales
Crime
Updated: 01 January 2022; Ref: scu.549798