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Sentencing – Careless driving – Failure to report accident. High Court of Justiciary: In an appeal against sentence by an appellant who pled guilty to charges of careless driving and failure to report an accident, the sheriff having found that the two offences were not committed on the same occasion and imposed six penalty points in respect of each charge, discounted in each case to four, the court held, it being accepted that it was incompetent for the sheriff to impose less than five points for the offence of failure to report, that the offences arose on the same occasion and that penalty points should only have been imposed in respect of the charge of failing to report, as that was the offence to which a higher number of penalty points could be attributed: it accordingly allowed the appeal to the extent of quashing the penalty points attributable to the careless driving charge and increasing those attributable to the charge of failing to report to five.
Sentencing – Careless driving – Failure to report accident. High Court of Justiciary: In an appeal against sentence by an appellant who pled guilty to charges of careless driving and failure to report an accident, the sheriff having found that the two offences were not committed on the same occasion and imposed six penalty points in respect of each charge, discounted in each case to four, the court held, it being accepted that it was incompetent for the sheriff to impose less than five points for the offence of failure to report, that the offences arose on the same occasion and that penalty points should only have been imposed in respect of the charge of failing to report, as that was the offence to which a higher number of penalty points could be attributed: it accordingly allowed the appeal to the extent of quashing the penalty points attributable to the careless driving charge and increasing those attributable to the charge of failing to report to five.
Chair of the Bar reports back
Marie Law, Director of Toxicology at AlphaBiolabs
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