Criminal Law Drink Driving, criminal justice, drink driving, ryde court — November 3, 2011 23:18 — 0 Comments
Drink Driving Ryde Court
On Wednesday, 22 June 2011 the blog site “Reasonable Grounds” who report on news in criminal justice, politics and human rights published a story of former Supreme Court Judge Rod Howie’s appearance at Ryde Local Court on that date.
The following quote is taken directly from the reasonable grounds blog site:
“The Magistrate at Ryde Local Court has already given hints that he is so far not pleased. As Madden reports:
The retired judge sent a note to the court informing it of his guilty plea and acknowledging that he expected to lose his licence and be fined.
But the magistrate said that Justice Howie appeared to have a “misapprehension” of sentencing options before the court, and said it was possible that a jail sentence could be handed down.
The magistrate also expressed his displeasure at Justice Howie’s failure to appear today, saying “whoever the offender might be, it’s a matter where I expect the man to be before the court.”
If the quote represented on this blog site is accurate then the Magistrate’s comments appear to be inappropriate.
As the learned Magistrate would know Justice Howie was part of the NSW Court of a criminal appeal bench that handed down the guideline judgment into High Range PCA. In fact, he was the Judge that delivered the judgment. As such he would know that he knew the sentencing options.
True it is that a person charged with Mid Range Drink Driving could receive a prison sentence. However, this is most unlikely for a person who is of good character and has no prior criminal record. The judicial commission sentencing statistics for the offence of Mid Range Drink Driving indicates that only 363 offenders were sentenced to imprisonment out of 43,185 cases of Mid Range Drink Driving dealt with in the Local Court between January 2007 to December 2007. During the same period only 20 first time offenders charged with Mid Range Drink Driving received a prison sentence out of 23,831 cases.
In NSW the Government has allowed for people to plead guilty and have their matter finalised in their absence by simply completing a written notice of pleading form. This written notice of pleading form is encouraged by police and is given to ever person charged with a criminal offence. The Courts in NSW would deal with countless thousands of offenders charged with Mid Range Drink Driving every year in their absence. It is unusual that former Supreme Court Justice Howie was singled out in this way.
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