Appeal News from Wainwright & Cummins

This week Wainwright & Cummins had two successes at the Court of Appeal, with two appeals against sentence brought by the Prison and Criminal law teams granted on behalf of imprisoned clients.

Appeal #1

The first appeal, on Tuesday, was for credit of 38 days that the client, Mr B, spent remanded on tagged bail before his conviction. The sentencing Judge did not state in court that Mr B should have the 38 days credited towards his sentence despite the requirement to do so in s240A of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. Therefore we brought the appeal to have the 38 days credited. We got agreement from the prosecution that Mr B was entitled to the days, and on Tuesday 11/08, the appeal was successful and the 38 days were credited towards Mr B’s sentence.

This led to the Prison law department at Wainwright & Cummins being extremely busy all day, because with the 38 days now credited towards his sentence, Mr B was due to be released immediately, as he was only 36 days from release. So we spent much of the day first chivvying the Court to send the Order to the prison, and then chivvying the prison to process the Order once it was received, in order to release Mr B!

Appeal #2

The second appeal was today (Friday 14/08) and involved a slightly more complex legal argument than for Mr B: that an extended sentence passed on our client Mr V was unlawful and that it should be substituted with a standard determinate sentence.

After some wrangling with the Court in pre-appeal correspondence, the legal issues were sorted and the appeal itself granted this morning without the need for extensive legal argument from our Solicitor Advocate Mr Curtis Myrie: it was clear to all that the sentence passed was unlawful and it was therefore quashed. Mr V will not be released from prison earlier, but he will spend a full year and a half less on licence than he would otherwise have done had the appeal not been successful.

Overall we are very proud of our success this week and look forward to replicating it frequently in weeks to come!