CRIMINAL LITIGATION

The court considered the application of R v Goodyear [2005] EWCA Crim 888, [2005] 3 All ER 117 in cases where the defendant is charged with one or more offences which are specified offences within Sch 15 to the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (CJA 2003).

HELD It is not necessarily inappropriate to seek or to give a Goodyear indication merely because a defendant is charged with a specified offence.

However, it must be considered that it will often be the case that the sentencing judge is not in possession of the information necessary to
enable him to make the assessment of risk that is  required, since pre-sentence and other appropriate reports will not be available at that stage. In such cases, it remains a matter for the judge to decide whether or not it is appropriate to give an indication; the judge is under no obligation to give an indication and he has an unfettered discretion in this regard.

If an indication is given, the judge should make it clear that if the defendant is later assessed as “dangerous”, the sentences mandated by  CJA 2003—an indeterminate or extended sentence—will be imposed and that, if the accused is assessed as dangerous, the indication can only relate to the notional determinate term which will be used in the calculation of the minimum specified period the offender would have to serve before he may apply to the Parole Board to direct his release or, in a case where an extended sentence is the only lawful option, it will relate to the appropriate custodial term within the extended sentence—that is, the indication does not encompass the length of any extension period during which the offender will be on licence following his release.Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Commencement No 16) Order 2007 (SI 2007/1999)  Section 29 of CJA 2003 creates (in the case of public prosecutions only) a new method of commencing criminal proceedings—written charge and requisition, to replace laying an information and issuing a summons. It has been brought into force in certain areas only—in that it applies only to magistrates’ courts sitting in specified locations—from 25 July 2007.