R v Lewes Crown Court, ex parte Sinclair
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 06 July 1992 |
| Date | 06 July 1992 |
| Court | House of Lords |
Queen's Bench Divisional Court
Before Lord Justice Watkins and Mr Justice Tucker
Criminal procedure - warrant of imprisonment - jurisdiction
A defendant who sought to argue that a warrant of imprisonment had not been correctly drawn up so as to reflect the sentence passed was challenging a matter relating to trial on indictment over which the Court of Appeal, Criminal Division, rather than the Queen's Bench Divisional Court, had jurisdiction.
The Divisional Court so held, dismissing Alastair Lowrie Sinclair's application for an order of certiorari to quash the decision of Lewes Crown Court to draw up a warrant of imprisonment ordering his imprisonment for 3 1/2 years, to be served consecutively rather than concurrently to the sentence he was already serving.
Mr Francis Moraes for the applicant; Mr Mark Shaw, who did not appear below, for Lewes Crown Court.
LORD JUSTICE WATKINS said that the applicant's contention was that he had understood that the sentence of 3 1/2 years would run concurrently with the sentence he was already serving.
Indisputably, unless an order was made in open court that the judge was ordering a sentence to run consecutively to an existing sentence, it had to be taken that that sentence was to take effect forthwith.
However, the respondent had argued that the Divisional Court was without jurisdiction to hear the matter and that the proper forum to hear it was the Court of Appeal, Criminal Division.
In In re SmalleyELR ([1985] AC 622) it was held that the sentence process following a trial or a plea...
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