Note of Appeal against Conviction and Sentence
The appellant was charged on indictment with:- "On 20 December 2003 at Penicuik Public Park, Carlops Road, Penicuik, Midlothian you ... did assault Richard Taylor ... and did repeatedly punch him on the head and repeatedly strike him with a brick or other similar instrument on the head all to his severe injury and the danger of his life." The appellant went to trial before a sheriff and jury at Edinburgh Sheriff Court. He adhered to a special defence which stated that "he was acting in self-defe ...
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D was asked to provide a specimen of blood for analysis by virtue of s7 Road Traffic Act 1988. D refused citing 4 medical reasons, namely that he had had a lot of tests recently and there had been difficulty finding veins, he was in pain, he was a diabetic, and he had high blood pressure. The officer did not believe that those reasons either individually or cumulatively amounted to a medical reason, and D was charged with failing to provide. D was convicted at first instance and on appeal to the ...
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Given the fact that breach of a Sexual Offences Prevention Order was punishable by a sentence of imprisonment of up to five years, D had to know, with sufficient precision, whether what he was contemplating doing was in breach of the order or not. Those drafting the order were essentially drafting a new criminal offence, and therefore the order had to be drafted with the same care as the drafting of offences in statutes, or the drafting of injunctions.
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The relevant question for a jury considering a charge of carrying an imitation firearm with intent to commit an indictable offence was whether they were sure that the thing that had been carried by D had had the appearance of a firearm at the relevant time. In that regard, evidence of witnesses that they had believed that the item had been a firearm was not dispositive. It was a matter for the jury to consider on all the evidence.
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The failure to direct the jury as to silence during interview under s.34 CJPOA 1994 did not always render a conviction unsafe, each case had to be dealt on its own facts.
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In extradition proceedings the appropriate route for challenging a decision reached under the Extradition Act 2003 s.7 as to whether a person appearing before court was identifiable as one and the same as the person in respect of whom a European arrest warrant was issued was by way of judicial review.
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The subsequent signature, in the course of the trial, of an amended indictment by the proper officer of the court, is material. It was upon an indictment signed, and properly so-called, that convictions were entered. In the absence of prejudice to D, the proceedings were thereby validated.
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Once a Judge had determined that D (with convictions) should be afforded a good character direction D was entitled at least to a direction to the effect that his credibility was intact and undamaged either by the convictions or otherwise, and that the jury should take that into account in assessing the credibility of his evidence and the explanations he had given. A judge who has decided that D is, for the purposes of the trial, of good character, must confer the benefit on him of a good charact ...
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The court modified the application of domestic privilege against self-incrimination so as to exclude from its ambit material constituting free-standing evidence that was not created by a respondent to a search order under compulsion. Where a search order obtained in an action for breach of confidence and copyright infringement led to the discovery of obscene images of children, the common law privilege against self-incrimination did not prevent the court from directing that the material be passe ...
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A conviction for conspiracy to cheat the public revenue was safe even though the Crown had not, on compelling public interest grounds, disclosed its source of information that appeared to support D’s claim that he had not reported the fraud due to threats of violence. An admission comprising the gist of the information made it plausible, but not likely, that D had been threatened and, in any case, there had been an abundance of circumstantial evidence showing the offender's involvement in the fr ...
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