Reid v Miller
| Jurisdiction | Scotland |
| Judgment Date | 13 July 1899 |
| Date | 13 July 1899 |
| Docket Number | No. 31. |
| Court | High Court of Justiciary |
Lord Justice-Clerk, Ld. Kyllachy, Lord Low.
Complaint—Specification—Penalty—Burgh Police (Scotland) Act, 1892 (55 and 56 Vict. cap. 55).—
A summary complaint set forth that the accused was guilty of a contravention of the Burgh Police (Scotland) Act, 1892, and was thereby liable to a penalty of forty shillings. The accused was convicted and sentenced to a fine of one pound, and in default of immediate payment to imprisonment for ten days. Held that the conviction fell to be quashed, in respect that the complaint did not specify that the accused was liable to imprisonment in default of payment of the fine.
Conviction—Record—Unauthenticated Alteration.—
The record of a conviction of two persons on a summary complaint bore that the magistrate fined the accused the sum of one pound each, and in default of immediate payment, sentenced them to imprisonment for ten days, and granted ‘warrant to officers of law to convey them to’ prison. The word ‘them’ in the warrant to imprison had originally been written ‘him,’ and the alteration was not authenticated, and had been made after the warrant was signed.
In a suspension, held that warrant to imprison, as originally written, was void for ambiguity; that the alteration, being unauthenticated, was ineffectual; and that the warrant to imprison being thus essentially bad, the whole conviction and sentence must fall with it.
On 20th March 1899 David Reid, advertising manager, 538 Gairbraid Street, Glasgow, and William Stewart Reid, joiner, 10 Paterson Street, Glasgow, were charged in the Police Court, Clydebank, on a summary complaint at the instance of the Burgh Prosecutor, setting forth that the accused had been guilty of a contravention of the Burgh Police (Scotland) Act, 1892, sec. 380, subsec. 10, ‘whereby the accused are each liable to a penalty of forty shillings,’ and praying the Court, inter alia, ‘to adjudge the said accused to suffer the penalties provided by the said Act.’
The accused pleaded not guilty, but after evidence had been led the magistrate convicted them of the contravention charged, and fined them one pound each. The conviction and sentence then proceeded as follows:—‘And in default of immediate payment thereof, sentences and adjudges the said accused to be imprisoned for the space of ten days from this date, unless said fine be sooner paid, and thereafter to be set at liberty: and for that purpose grants warrant to officers of law...
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