R v Laycock
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 06 May 2003 |
| Date | 06 May 2003 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) |
COURT OF APPEAL
Before Lord Woolf, Lord Chief Justice, Mr Justice Mitchell and Mrs Justice Hallett.
Criminal procedure - indictments should not include counts with prejudicial effect
The prosecution should exercise care when framing an indictment so as not to overload it with unnecessary counts, particularly when they disclosed the fact that a defendant had previously been imprisoned.
The Court of Appeal, Criminal Division, so stated in dismissing an appeal by Darryl Laycock against his conviction at Manchester Crown Court (Mr Justice Sachs and a jury) on September 19, 2001 for possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life (count 1), possession of a prohibited weapon (count 3), possession of prohibited ammunition (count 4), possession of a firearm when a prohibited person because he had been sentenced to imprisonment for four-and-a-half years (count 5) and possession of ammunition when a prohibited person because he had been sentenced to imprisonment for four-and-a-half years (count 6). All the counts related to the same occasion and the same firearm. He was sentenced to a total of eight years imprisonment.
Mr Christopher Daw, assigned by the Registrar of Criminal Appeals, for the appellant; Mr Simon Nichol, who did not appear below, for the Crown.
THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE, giving the judgment of the court, said that the appellant's sentence of eight years imprisonment was made up of concurrent sentences of eight years for count 1, five years for counts 3 and 4, and 30 months for counts 5 and 6.
Mr Daw now frankly conceded that he should have applied to sever counts 5 and 6 from the indictment because of the reference in those offences to a previous conviction in relation to which the appellant had been sentenced to a substantial period of imprisonment.
Mr Nichol accepted that that reference to the previous sentence was capable of causing injustice and therefore a matter which should not have been before the jury.
Alternatively, a formula could have been used whereby an appropriate admission was made...
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