Community Order Secured after Dangerous Driving Police Chase
Our client, a young man of good character, pleaded guilty to dangerous driving after he was involved in 13-minute police chase on his motorbike through a number of busy roads and pedestrianized areas.
Our client was seen by Police doing a number of wheelies in areas with 50-60 mph speed limits, overtaking cars, running a red light, mounting the pavement and cutting a corner on the wrong side of the road. The driving offence was aggravated by the fact that he was driving without a licence or insurance, using a vehicle without a test certificate, fraudulently using a registration document, and failing to stop for the Police.
Although there are no sentencing guidelines for dangerous driving at the Crown Court, a number of decided cases with similar circumstances indicated that an immediate custodial sentence should be passed. The defendants in these cases received immediate custodial sentences of up to 22 months imprisonment.
To assist our client at his sentencing hearing, we collated various character references from family members, which included information about how he was helping to care for his sick mother. We also obtained medical evidence detailing his mother’s medical condition and information about our client’s future career plans as he had recently graduated from University.
Ahead of the sentencing hearing, we persuaded the Court to order a Pre-Sentence Report to be prepared by the Probation Service. This report was extremely positive: it helped the Court to find out more information about our client and recommended a community order.
The Court took this recommendation into account when sentencing our client. Our client received a 12-month community order with an unpaid work requirement and 12-month driving disqualification. This was much more lenient than the sentences that other defendants had received in the similar decided cases, with the added success that our client kept his liberty.
Amy Cox and Milly Blunt prepared the case for sentencing, and Megan Fletcher of Charter Chambers was instructed.
