A community order had been made and, after lodging a notice of appeal against both conviction and sentence, the defendant failed to attend for community service on two occasions. The appeal was later dismissed. The service did not know of the appeals when it complained of the breach. The justices ruled that the breach proceedings should not have been instituted while the appeal was pending and they dismissed the information.
Held: The fact that an appeal had been lodged did not mean that the probation service could not institute proceedings for breach of an order which was under appeal.
Blofeld J said of the magistrates: ‘They were perfectly entitled to consider all the facts of the relevant case, including the specific fact that a notice of appeal had been lodged. If in all the circumstances of the individual case they had then come to the conclusion that there was a reasonable excuse for this particular offender, Mr. Bent, not to have attended, then under sch.2 they were entitled to say so. They did not take that course.’
Saville LJ said that the starting point must always be that ‘once a sentence of any kind has been passed, then it is in force and enforceable in the absence of specific provisions to the contrary.’
Saville LJ and Blofeld J
(1996) 160 JP Rep 297
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – West Midlands Probation Board v Sutton Coldfield Magistrates’ Court and others Admn 11-Jan-2008
The Board complained that the defendants had failed to comply with the requirements of community service orders. They appealed against a finding that the complaints were not made out. The defendants had not attended because they were appealing their . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Criminal Sentencing
Updated: 12 January 2022; Ref: scu.263520