Minor mistakes in police statements

Convicted Driver Insurance

paspac

New Member
I'll be in court in two weeks on the charge of being drunk in charge of a vehicle. Something that is extremely out of character for me so I'm incredibly ashamed of but I am guilty so will face the music and hopefully put this behind me.

I just received a copy of all the evidence from my solicitor and have had a read through everything. This has left me with a few questions.
  1. Considering my guilty plea, will all of this evidence be read out in court?
  2. I'm a little shocked at the police statements. Aside from poor spelling and grammar, I've noticed several minor mistakes. The spelling of my name is incorrect in some cases, my nationality is wrong and I'm repeatedly referred to as "her" in one statement. Is any of this grounds to have those particular statements removed from evidence? It won't have any bearing on the outcome but I'm already wondering if there's any more significant mistakes. I'll take a more detailed look later when I get over the shock of having read through it in the first place.
 
With some police forces now they dictate their statements and they are auto inserted into the file, so that could be where the errors occurred.
They have no bearing on the case and your solicitor can perhaps tun through the facts with the prosecutor before your case on the day if they worry you, or simply correct them if they aren’t read out in court.
 
paspac

Welcome to the forum.

To answer your question about statements - when I was in court nearly two years ago for drink driving the duty prosecution solicitor addressed the bench in the court room and summarised the content of the police statement rather than reading it out. They work for the Crown Prosecution Service and are on the same side as the police.

In terms of your own circumstances - I wouldn't use the poor spelling or grammar as an excuse to contest your case. This matter is really what I would describe as a poor 'housekeeping' issue by the police officer(s) who arrested you.

Considering the standard of police recruits these days, it isn't surprising the quality of their court files is abismal. Please don't try to use this to discredit the police in court - I'm sure your solicitor knows what they are doing. If anything your solicitor should have a quite word with their counterpart in court about the 'quality' of the statements. Kind of like professional feedback between gents and ladies in the legal circle.

CJ
 
Thanks for the advice guys. I'm quite nervous about the whole thing and prob overthinking it all. As I say, I'll take what comes and hopefully move on.
 
Agree sadly I have to say don’t fight the system. Accept, get the minimal sentence et. & try to get your life back on track
 
Thought I should let you know how I got on. 10 points and £350 fine. The whole experience has been a tough lesson but I should probably consider myself lucky.

Anyway, thanks for the advice. It was much appreciated.
 
Not a bad result, just be careful you dont get 3 points for speeding in the next 3 years!
 
Mate believe it or not I know of a couple of people who have got away with cases where the statement is of poor quality with spelling mistakes. If the details on the breathalyser form are incorrect with a Mrs instead of Mr or vice versa you should be able to get away with it. Good thing about a drunk in charge it doesn't stay on your license for 11 years (I think) and 10 points and a fine is a standard result. Did you pay for the solicitor ??
 
Takingthepiss said:
Mate believe it or not I know of a couple of people who have got away with cases where the statement is of poor quality with spelling mistakes. If the details on the breathalyser form are incorrect with a Mrs instead of Mr or vice versa you should be able to get away with it. Good thing about a drunk in charge it doesn't stay on your license for 11 years (I think) and 10 points and a fine is a standard result. Did you pay for the solicitor ??
Click to expand...

The amount of people on this forum who have spent over £10k on motoring solicitors to try this terrible procedural error defence is astonishing. Not just on this forum, I would need more than 2 hands to count the amount of people who I have met through AA who have wasted the same eye watering sums on this defence would also leave you scratching your head. Unless the breath test machine has not been recently callibrated or there is too much deviation between the two readings then this defence will almost always not work. If there was evidence of it working I would provide case reports. The case reports not existing is an indication of how often a defence of this nature works in the UK resulting in aquittal, every drink driving solicitor would be advertising such a win on their website. Specialist drink driving solicitor firms are charlatans.

Not only this, but you will have to plead not guilty which adds at least £620 in court fees on top of the fine if found guilty. Then you will get the higher scale of the ban for not accepting guilt plus the solicitor to be paid on top for all consultation, your day in the magistrates and your day at trial. Not a cheap defence to wing on a prayer. Any spelling error, mis-gender or box ticked in error can be corrected in court, this is how our legal system works. In the US on the other hand they're a litigious bunch and this sort of thing can lead to an acquittal.

I'm not saying the defence has NEVER worked, but what I am saying is there's a system in place to stop it from working and the defence is often majorly misold to desperate people.
 
The mistakes def weren't enough to get an aquittal as there was plenty of other evidence that would have got me convicted. At the time I just wondered if less evidence might make it look less bad and that maybe my solicitor could request the PPS withdraw it before we even go to court. It's irelevnt now though.

I was fined £350 + £15 court levy. My solicitor charged me £300 and I wasn't eligible for legal aid so will pay that myself. As I said in an earlier post, I want to put the whole thing behind me so have paid the court fine and will sort the solicitor out as soon as I can.

I'm considering myself fortunate enough with the outcome. If the drink driving charge went ahead it could have worked out a lot worse.

Once again, I thanks for all the responses on here. They def helped to put my mind at ease.
 
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