Prison term reduced after conviction is overturned

Saturday 09 September 2023

A man imprisoned for three separate driving offences has had his sentence reduced after one of his convictions was quashed on appeal by the Royal Court.

Connor Tyson Hansford was given a 48-week prison sentence in June and disqualified from driving for 42 months after being convicted of failing to stop and report an accident, holding a mobile phone while driving, and failing to provide a breath specimen.

However, the Royal Court has reduced Mr Hansford’s sentence to six months’ imprisonment and a 30-month driving ban after finding that the Relief Magistrate was wrong to convict him of failing to stop and report an accident when his transit van hit a grass bank on Mont Fallu in St Peter on 6 May last year.

When the Police discovered the vehicle, following an anonymous call by a member of the public, there was no dispute that it had suffered significant damage in the incident, neither was the fact that the driver had left the scene a matter of disagreement.

However, Advocate Darry Robinson argued that Mr Hansford had no obligation to report the incident because there had been no damage to property caused by the accident, and the Court noted that the owner of the land "was not concerned about the small amount of grass that appeared to have been removed, no repair work was necessary, and no inconvenience had been caused to him or his business as a result of the incident".

Setting out the Royal Court’s approach, the Deputy Bailiff, Robert MacRae, sitting with Jurats Gareth Hughes and Michael Berry, said that the Relief Magistrate had given undue emphasis to the damage caused to the vehicle rather than the state of the hedge or bank that it had struck adding that "there was insufficient evidence for [her] to come to the decision that he did".

As a result, an 18-week prison sentence for that offence fell away, and led the Court to consider whether a further consecutive sentence of 30 weeks’ imprisonment, imposed for failing to give a breath test on 4 December last year, was appropriate.

"It was necessary for us to revisit the sentence and sentence the appellant afresh in relation to this matter, as we were unsure of how the Magistrate would have treated this offence had it stood alone – although we were certain that she would have imposed a lesser period of disqualification," Mr MacRae explaining.

Concluding that a period of imprisonment was still justified, the court imposed a sentence of six months’ imprisonment, a period of disqualification from driving of 30 months, and ordered that Mr Hansford be re-tested before the return of his driving licence.