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Jersey Unreported Judgments |
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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> Jersey Unreported Judgments >> Burns -v- AG 3-Feb-2006 [2006] JRC 020 (03 February 2006) URL: http://www.bailii.org/je/cases/UR/2006/2006_020.html Cite as: [2006] JRC 20, [2006] JRC 020 |
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[2006]JRC020
ROYAL COURT
(Samedi Division)
3rd February 2006
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Before : |
Sir Philip Bailhache, Kt., Bailiff, and Jurats Bullen and King. |
Martin Burns
-v-
Attorney General
Appeal against a conviction by the Magistrates' Court on a charge of:
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1 count of: |
Being drunk in charge of a motor vehicle contrary to Article 28 (1)(b) of the Road Traffic (Jersey) Law 1956. |
J. N. F. Hawgood, Esq., Crown Advocate.
Advocate J. M. Grace for the Defendant.
JUDGMENT
THE BAILIFF:
1. This is one of those very unusual cases where a guilty plea was entered under a mistaken misapprehension that the charge was made out. That mistaken misapprehension was contributed to by the fact that the charge was wrongly drawn in that the appellant was parked not on Union Lane as alleged in the charge sheet but on a parking lot adjacent to Union Lane. That parking lot was private land. It was not land to which the public had access and there was therefore no basis for the charge in law. We therefore allow the appeal and quash the conviction.
2. So far as the costs are concerned it is true that the appellant was not entirely free from criticism in the sense that he failed to inform his legal advisers that he was parked not on Union Lane but on the adjacent parking lot. Nonetheless, the authorities which have been placed before me indicate that where an appeal is allowed the costs should normally follow the event, except where there is evidence that the defendant has acted in such a way as to bring suspicion upon himself, or that otherwise it is appropriate that the defendant should be left to pay his own costs. On balance, and with some hesitation, it seems to me that none of those considerations applies in this case and I therefore order that the costs of the appellant both here and in the Magistrate's Court should be paid out of public funds.
