England and Wales High Court (Administrative Court) Decisions

1. LORD JUSTICE SIMON BROWN: This is a Prosecutor's appeal by Case Stated against the adjudication of the City of London Justices on 17th June 1997 acquitting the Respondent of an offence under section 139(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. The information proffered against him alleged that he, on 1st February 1997, at King William Street had with him, without good reason or lawful authority, an article which had a blade or was pointed, namely a knife with a five inch fixed blade contrary to the section.

2. The few relevant parts of section 139 are these:

3. There was no dispute that the Respondent had the knife with him in a public place. The issue was whether he had a good reason for that. The burden of establishing that rested upon him to be discharged on the balance of probabilities.

4. A large part of the Case Stated consists of verbatim extracts from the Justices Clerk's notes of the evidence. Rather than set these out I propose instead to summarise the evidence, largely as it is set out in the helpful skeleton argument provided for us by

5. Mr Pavry for the Appellant. The Respondent, I should note, is neither represented nor present in person. There is some doubt, indeed, as to whether he was ever properly notified of this hearing date but, given the way this appeal is to be decided, that matters not.

6. The Respondent is a part-time mini-cab driver, a man of no previous convictions, who drives his own

7. Ford Scorpio motor car for a mini cab firm. On

8. Monday 27th January 1997 a passenger left in his vehicle a bag containing a five inch fixed bladed knife. On Tuesday 28th January the Respondent discovered that knife and placed it in the doorwell on the driver's side of the vehicle. On Wednesday 29th January he informed his employer, Mr Mohammed Nasir of Cityman Radio Cars, that a passenger had left a knife in the vehicle. The reporting of that event was confirmed to the police by Mr Nasir. At 02.15 a.m. on Saturday 1st February 1997 the Respondent was stopped by a police officer whilst driving his vehicle and the knife was duly found in the driver's side doorwell. Thus it was that the Respondent came to be charged.

9. The Justices' conclusions upon that evidence were these:

10. The single question posed for the opinion of this court is:

11. In contending for the answer "no" to that question Mr Pavry for the Prosecutor submits that once the Respondent had discovered the knife in his vehicle he was bound to remove it to a private place at the first reasonable opportunity and this counsel submits, he had failed to do. He argues that the Justices failed to have regard to the fact that by the time of the arrest the knife had been in the Respondent's possession, in his vehicle, to his knowledge, for something like four days and that there was no real evidence that he had not by then had a reasonable opportunity to hand it in. In support of his argument, he refers us to

12. Persuasively although these submissions were advanced, and superficially similar though one recognises the case of Gregson to be, I, for my part, remain disinclined to accept the argument. I readily acknowledge that the Justices' conclusions here could be thought to stretch the concept of good reason to its uttermost limits and certainly not every Bench of Magistrates would necessarily have taken the same view. The Respondent should perhaps therefore regard himself as somewhat fortunate at the outcome of the case. The position here, however, is to my mind materially different from that arising in Gregson. The defendant's detailed story there, which it is unnecessary for present purposes to recount, appears to have been riddled with improbabilities and inconsistencies and it is perhaps unsurprising that this court rejected it as a sufficient basis for finding good reason for the knife still being carried six days after the defendant last needed it for work. Here, by contrast, the Respondent's explanation and good character are not in doubt. In these circumstances I am not prepared to say that despite their having accepted every word of the Respondent's evidence, the Justices were simply not entitled to regard him as having had good reason for continuing to have the knife in his vehicle. It seems to me implicit in the Justices' findings of fact that the Respondent was intending at all times to hand the knife in to the controller's office when next he went there, and that he had not in fact been there during the interval between first finding and reporting the knife and later being arrested. I think it was open to the Justices to conclude that the time had not yet arrived when the Respondent was bound in law to have made a special journey in order to hand this knife in. I accept that that time must inevitably have arrived very soon after his arrest, but it seems to me properly within the limits of the Justices' discretion, when determining the issue of good reason, to decide that it had not quite been reached by the point of his arrest.

13. For those reasons, I, for my part, would answer the question posed for us in the affirmative and accordingly dismiss this appeal.

14. MR JUSTICE MANCE: I agree. What is good reason in particular factual circumstances is a matter of judgment about which there is some scope for legitimate difference of opinion at least in marginal cases. This is certainly a marginal case, in my view. The Justices, as their Case Stated shows, cannot be said to have taken into account inadmissible considerations, or to have failed to have taken into account admissible considerations. As to weight they placed on the considerations which they evaluated, the fact that this court or another Bench of Justices might not have reached the same conclusion as these Justices is not sufficient to justify this court in saying that the Justices' decision was wrong in law, or irrational, or should otherwise be set aside.