(Archive) New complaint: further charge arising from incident

You are not entitled to a further fixed payment in the following circumstances.

• A was charged with falsely stating to a shop employee that he had previously purchased a defective jacket and induced the employee to exchange the jacket for money, thus getting £75 by fraud. He was subsequently served with a further complaint (the original complaint having been deserted) which contained the original fraud charge and also charged A with stealing the jacket immediately before taking it to the exchange desk.
  • The theft charge was clearly an important omission from the original complaint. Although it was a fresh charge it arose from the same incident and only one fixed payment can be claimed.
• B was charged with possession of drugs between two dates covering a four month period. The complaint was deserted and replaced by a fresh complaint which additionally charged B with supplying drugs at the same time and between the same dates.
  • Again, although the charge of supply did not feature in the original complaint, it arose from the same incident which can include a “course of conduct”.
• C was charged with theft and breach of the peace in connection with an incident in a grocer’s shop. A further complaint was served introducing a charge of breaking the shop window at the same time.
  • The second complaint arose from the same incident and is included within the existing ABWOR or criminal legal aid proceedings even though different in nature.
• D was charged with several counts of theft from various shops within a shopping centre. Separately he was charged under the “known thief provisions”, having been arrested in the car park in possession of items including a foil-lined carrier bag used to evade detection by the shop’s security gates.

Although the locus where he committed the thefts and the place where he was arrested are different, it was considered that offences all arose from the same incident.

• X was charged with drunk driving and failing to provide information as to the identity of the driver of the vehicle and, separately, with driving whilst disqualified and driving without insurance.
  • This is the typical “split RTA” situation: all the offences arising out of the same incident but being pursued under separate prosecutions.  They are all the same proceedings.
• Y was charged with a range of disparate offences under the first complaint, including a number of house-breaking charges, and, in particular, stealing keys for a motor vehicle and the motor vehicle itself, between 30 October and 7 December (the charges of theft relating to the motor vehicle falling on 5 December). The accused was separately charged with driving whilst disqualified and without insurance on 5 December on various roads, some of them unconnected to the loci of the various counts of theft.
  • All the various charges in the first complaint represent the same proceedings. The RTA offences, on a separate complaint, clearly arose from two of the charges on the original complaint, thereby forming part of the same incident.
• Z was charged with theft of a motor vehicle and, at a different location, theft of a trailer. On a separate complaint he was charged with driving whilst disqualified and without insurance.

The starting point, in connection with the charges in the separate complaint is the locus from which he allegedly stole the trailer and, although the separate offences took place on a number of public roads after this, they all arose from the same incident, the same course of conduct.