Louise Evans, of Champion Road, Kingswood, was given an eight- month sentence in 2009 after she admitted false accounting and theft from Whitehall Rugby Club at Bristol Crown Court.
Despite selling her car and house in a bid to pay the club compensation, she was put back behind bars for another 12 months in February for not coughing up the full £27,000 she owed.Hurrah! That’s what you should expect when you can’t meet your legal obliga…
Oh.
On Friday Lord Justice Moses branded the magistrates' decision a "basic error of law" and ordered that Evans be released "as fast as humanly possible".*sigh*
Lord Justice Moses, sitting with Mr Justice Eady …said: "The magistrates erred in two ways: Firstly in failing to have regard to the order of the crown court, in which it was accepted that she had no means to pay the confiscation order which was linked to the compensation order.
"The second error into which the magistrates fell arose out of their allision between the resources of her husband and her own resources."
He concluded: "She should never have been ordered to go to prison at all and the magistrates erred in serious measure in these two failings."So if you can’t pay, the justice system won’t make you pay, and won’t punish you with jail time either. Well, if you owe money to a third party, that is.
On the other hand, if you owe a debt to the state, you can just sit in jail until you come up with the goods.
10 comments:
"She should never have been ordered to go to prison at all and the magistrates erred in serious measure"
Does this mean she's due compensation for being 'locked up when she shouldn't have been?'
£18,000 should cover it...
"allision between the resources of her husband and her own resources..
Now, if she was divorcing her husband it would be a different story.
I thought marriage was a trust and there's no fiscal separation between husband and wife...
The difference, presumably, is that one had the property and car before she committed the offence while the other had two cars as a result of his criminal offence. In my perfect world, any drug dealer sentenced to prison should be made to share his/her cell with a druggie suffering from withdrawal symptoms. That'll teach the bugger! As far as the rugby club is concerned, there is always the civil court.
Ah! good ole Justice Eady at it again.
But wait ... those magistrates ... It's time folk woke yup to their mistakes and the damage they cause. We had one nut job mad old bat who announced she didn't want to hear any evidence, that we were guilty of a crime we weren't charged with - embarrased officials made the original erroneous charges disappear - but the deranged old trout was never hauled up for anything and is still hanging 'em high...
Justice versus the law eh?
What does "allision" mean? The on-line OED doesn't know; perhaps m'learned feind made it up.
Radical Rodent
It's a legal term.
Allision:
maritime law. The running of one vessel against another. It is distinguished from collision in this, that the latter means the running of two vessels against each other; this latter term is frequently used for allision.
I rather think m'learned friend is alluding to a confused metaphor, rather than making it up.
"The running of one vessel against another."
That would be ramming,surely?
"That would be ramming,surely? "
In colloquial language, yes. In a legal context, that would probably mean something to do with sheep though...
"Does this mean she's due compensation for being 'locked up when she shouldn't have been?'"
I wouldn't be at all surprised!
".. but the deranged old trout was never hauled up for anything and is still hanging 'em high... "
It's easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle than a judge out of a job...
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