English and Welsh Courts - Miscellaneous

IN THE NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE COUNTY COURT

		The Law Courts The Quayside Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE1 3LA
		9th April 2014

1. THE DISTRICT JUDGE: On 6^th March 2014 the defendant was made the subject of an injunction to restrain him from entering an area of Stobhill in Morpeth which is clearly set out on a plan attached to the injunction order. The injunction was made pursuant to s.153(a) of the Housing Act 1996, the antisocial behaviour injunction jurisdiction. The reason for it is that the defendant's father is a vulnerable adult who has been assaulted and is in fear of his son, Michael, the defendant.
2. Yesterday, 8 April 2014, at Morpeth County Court the defendant was brought before me having been arrested on 7 April 2014 on suspicion of breaching the order by attending his father's house at 52 Eleventh Avenue and there drinking heavily with his father. He hid from the police when they arrived at the house. He was arrested, detained overnight, brought to court and accepted that he was guilty. He was offered and declined legal advice, as he has also done today. I explained to him yesterday that the injunction was for the protection of his father and he made it clear to me that he understood the terms of the injunction, particularly that he was not to go to his father's house. I did not send him to immediate custody because it was the first breach. I enquired after his health and he said he suffers from cirrhosis of the liver and he has some treatment for it. He also had a probation service appointment to keep yesterday which bore on my decision not to send him to immediate custody.
3. There were aggravating features yesterday that led me to pass a sentence of six weeks imprisonment which I duly suspended for six months. Those aggravating features were deliberately going back to the house of his father, a vulnerable adult, and thereby targeting him; his previous offences, including many of which he has failed to respond to court orders; his failure to respond to warnings no doubt given to him by courts; and the fact that yesterday he was under the influence of alcohol. The mitigating feature was that he admitted his guilt. I passed, in my judgment, the minimum sentence commensurate with the breach, which was one of six weeks custody. I explained the effect of suspending it and that was if he stayed out of trouble and in particular abided by the terms of the injunction for a period of six months then he would no longer be in jeopardy of imprisonment for yesterday's breach.
4. Today the defendant appears before me for having been found once again at 52 Eleventh Avenue, Stobhill. He tells me that he arranged with his father on the telephone to take a taxi there to collect his clothes because he has been offered a bed at his aunt's house. The police were called when the taxi fare was not paid and the defendant was found in the property. In my judgment the defendant has deliberately gone to the property, whether for collecting his clothes or just to get off the street, in flagrant breach of my order and I read from the first page of the order under the heading "Alternative Disposal". It says:

"It is ordered that Michael Lawson be committed for contempt to prison for a total of six weeks. The order is suspended until 8^th October 2014 and will not be put in force if during that time the Defendant complies with the following terms…"

Then I have written, "Obeys the order dated 6^th March 2014".

So it could not have been a more flagrant breach than to go straight back within two or three hours of having appeared before me and having had that document written out in the defendant's presence and a copy was served on him at court, and I saw that that happened.

5. I am therefore faced with no alternative but to enact the sentence I passed yesterday and to add a further two weeks for the second breach. Therefore you will go to prison for eight weeks.

MR LAWSON: Eight full weeks?

THE DISTRICT JUDGE: You will serve half of it in prison. The governor will explain the basis of purging your contempt, no doubt.

MR LAWSON: No, [inaudible].

THE DISTRICT JUDGE: So my sentence is the minimum that the law really permits for such a flagrant breach. I have followed the Sentencing Council Guidelines on Breach of Protective Orders to which I have been referred. There is be activation in full of the suspended sentence passed on 8^th April 2014, ie six weeks to which a further period of imprisonment of two weeks is to be added for the second breach, making 8 weeks in total. I have borne in mind your guilty plea both yesterday and today and all that I have read and heard about you today and in particular your failure for a long time to obey court orders. That is the sentence of the court.

[Hearing ends]