Court of Appeal
| DOI | 10.1177/002201836002400104 |
| Date | 01 January 1960 |
| Published date | 01 January 1960 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Court of
Appeal
"CRIMINAL
CAUSE OR
MATTER"
In Re Hastings
(No.3)
ONE cannot
but
admire
the
persistence and ingenuity
with which
the
appellant has sought to have his sentence
of imprisonment set aside.
It
will be remembered
that
it all
began in July 1957 when the appellant was convicted at
the
Liverpool Crown Courton an indictment containingfivecounts
all of which charged
the
appellant with various acts of financial
dishonesty.
The
Recorder sentenced
the
appellant to four years'
corrective training
but
inadvertently omitted to state
that
this
was a concurrent sentence on each count of
the
indictment.
Thereafter
the
appellant appealed to
the
Court of Criminal
Appeal against both sentences and conviction.
That
Court
quashed two of the five counts
but
did not interfere with
the
sentence.
The
appellant
then
sought to have this sentence
quashed because it was a "general sentence" for more
than
one
offence which it was said could not lawfully be imposed,
because it was impossible to ascertain from
the
record what
imprisonment had been imposed for
anyone
of
the
offences.
The
appellant accordingly applied to a Divisional Court
of the Queen's Bench Division for
habeas
corpus
but
that
Court
considered
that
the sentence was obviously a concurrent one
on each count and
that
the
omission expressly to state this
did not invalidate
the
sentence (1959 J.C.L. 71, 1959
I.
W.L.R. 372).
The
appellant thereupon went to
the
Court of
Appeal
but
here he was met with the objection
that
the Court
had no jurisdiction to entertain the appeal because it related
to a 'criminal cause or matter' within the meaning of
S.31
(I)
(a) of
the
Supreme Court of Judicature (Consolidation)
Act, 1925. Nothing daunted,
the
appellant renewed his
application for
habeas
corpus
to a differently constituted Court
of the Queen's Bench Division.
It
will be remembered
that
the Court reviewed
the
law on this subject and reached
the
conclusion
that
where one Court has given a decision an
applicant for
habeas
corpus
is not entitled to be heard again by
29
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