R v Barrick
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE |
| Judgment Date | 03 May 1985 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1985] EWCA Crim J0503-2 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) |
| Docket Number | No. 1348/B/85 |
| Date | 03 May 1985 |
[1985] EWCA Crim J0503-2
The Lord Chief Justice of England (Lord Lane)
Mr. Justice Farquharson
and
Mr. Justice Tudor Price
No. 1348/B/85
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL
CRIMINAL DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
MR. R. HUMPHREY appeared on behalf of the Appellant.
On 7th February this year in the Crown Court at Bolton before Judge Forrester and a jury, this appellant, John Barrick, aged 41 at the time, was convicted and sentenced as follows: on four counts of false accounting, on four counts of obtaining by deception and two counts of theft he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment on each count to run concurrently, namely two years' imprisonment in all.
He now appeals against sentence by leave of the single Judge. The facts of the case were these. There was a Mr. Frew who lived in Cheshire. He was in the car trade and owned showrooms at Farnworth. In 1982 he floated a limited finance company of which he, his wife and his son were founder directors. They invested a sum of £14,000 in that company. As its name indicated its principal object was to provide finance by way of loans and this was to be an enterprise which would see them into the future for some considerable time.
They wanted a manager to take control of the finance company to enable Mr. Frew senior to concentrate his attentions on the other side of the business, namely the car sales. Consequently advertisements were put in the press and elsewhere for a manager and to those advertisements the appellant replied. He was interviewed. It emerged, quite correctly, that he had been a police officer - he had been a dog handler, so we are told – and at the relevant time was a security guard employed by a Government department. He said that he had previous experience in finance company business. That and the other matters which were elicited at the interview seemed to Mr. Frew to make this appellant a perfect man for the job.
He was employed immediately. He was issued with a company car. He determined and regulated his own working hours and he was allowed, at any rate for the time being, to continue his job as a security guard with the Government department. From then on be had a clear run on his own as to how the company should be organised. He canvassed clients. He kept the accounts. Be was responsible for such documentation as was necessary.
Mr. Frew Merely acted as the banker allowing the appellant to have money as the appellant might require.
By November 1983 it was plain, on an examination of the books, that there had been a number of defalcations in the accounts. A closer examination revealed that a great number of the accounts were bogus. The so-called borrower did not exist, the borrower's address was one which could not be found when it was sought. The police were told and investigations started, which showed that there had been a number of irregularities which were reflected by way of illustration by the counts in the indictment, which were sample counts of what had been going on. An accountant examined the books. He said it was virtually impossible to ascertain the full extent of the loss, but the counts in the indictment indicated a loss of something just short of £9,000, and may perhaps have been a good deal more.
The appellant was interviewed at length by the police. We have read the account of that interview, which was a mixture of blaming Mr. Frew, Mrs. Frew and indeed the son, suggesting that they were in some way involved in the frauds, and that was the type of story which he was putting forward to the police. He maintained throughout that he had made no profit at all himself from the bogus accounts and could not understand how anyone was suggesting that the sum of £9,000 was involved in his defalcation.
Mr. Humphrey on his behalf has put forward all the points of mitigation which were available to him: the good character, the age at the time of the trial, the fact that he had no previous convictions, he served as a police officer and the fact that the mere term of imprisonment of any length is likely to be extremely deleterious and unpleasant for a person of this sort.
This case provides us with an opportunity to make some observations upon the proper sentence to be passed in respect of certain types of theft and fraud as to which there has been recently some divergence of opinion.
The type of case with which we are concerned is where a person in a position of trust, for example, an accountant, solicitor, bank employee or postman, has used that privileged and trusted position to defraud his partners or clients or employers or the general public of sireable sums of money. He will usually, as in this case, be a person of hitherto...
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R v Williams (Darren Stephen)
...order by deception. 5 The grounds of appeal appear to have been drafted by the applicant himself. He relies on and refers to the case of R v Barrick (1985) 7 Cr App R(S) 142 and prays in aid various matters of personal mitigation. 6 The reliance on Barrick is entirely misconceived and it is......
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R v Cook (Timothy John)
...into account. The sentence that was passed, it is accepted, was a sentence which was within the tariff laid down by the cases of Clarke and Barrick and complied with those guidelines. In those circumstances, when sentence had been passed, the appellant did not seek to appeal that sentence. ......
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R v Connor
...Angel, [1998] 1 Cr. App. R (S.) 347, distinguished. (3) R. v. AragonUNK(1995), 16 Cr. App. R. 930, considered. (4) R. v. BarrickUNK(1985), 81 Cr. App. R. 78; 7 Cr. App. R. (S.) 142, followed. (5) R. v. BrownUNK(1989), 11 Cr. App. R. (S.) 419, considered. (6) R. v. Clark, [1998] 2 Cr. App. R......
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