Jersey Unreported Judgments

Bail application - breach of peace - grave and criminal assault

[2020]JRC025

Royal Court

(Samedi)

7 February 2020

The Attorney General

-v-

Michael Steven Dacosta Moiro

M. R. Maletroit Esq., Crown Advocate

Advocate S. E. A. Dale for the defendant

JUDGMENT

THE DEPUTY BAILIFF:

1.        Mr Moiro you have pleaded guilty to two serious offences today.  Both occurred on the same day in the vicinity of your home.  Count 1, breach of the peace, involved the use of a baseball bat by you, in the vicinity of a former partner of yours and her child.  Count 2, which occurred shortly thereafter, involved you committing a grave and criminal assault on another then current or former partner of yours.  In the course of this incident the knife you were wielding resulted in injury to that woman.  So we have a situation of two women who were one way or another victims of offences committed by you in September of last year.

2.        You do have a record of previous court appearances, although nothing recent before the Courts of Jersey.  Now the policy of the court in those circumstances is to decline to grant bail pending sentence save in exceptional circumstances; and both counsel are agreed that represents the law notwithstanding the passage of the Criminal Procedure (Bail) (Jersey) Law 2017 which, in any event, makes it clear that the right to bail no longer persists, once a defendant has pleaded guilty to an offence warranting a custodial sentence. 

3.        In this case the exceptional circumstance urged upon us does not relate to your circumstances, but to the circumstances of your daughter, who is 14 years of age, and had just come to Jersey and least on one view is doing much better than she was in England.  We are pleased to hear that and we have seen in court today the mother of the child's half sibling who can offer her accommodation over the weekend, and we have heard that Children Services are abreast of her case and will offer her support next week.  We hope that support will extend to both her schooling and accommodation for as long as she remains in the Island.

4.        But we are unable to find exceptional circumstances sufficient to grant you bail today and accordingly you will be remanded in custody until you are sentenced by the Inferior Number on the 13^th March, 2020, at 10.00 am.  We direct that when you are sentenced there should be a report by the Children Service, setting out the position in relation to your daughter's accommodation, schooling and progress, particularly if she is still in the Island at that stage.

Authorities

Criminal Procedure (Bail) (Jersey) Law 2017