Home Up Judgement
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Recent UK law, possibly of interest to Bermuda
authorities:
The forfeiture of goods - or more correctly, preventing
the police acting outside of the law ....
This is a draft of the judgment
to be handed down on Friday 26 November 1999 at 10.00 a.m. in Court No
67. 11 is confidential to Counsel and Solicitors, but the substance may
be communicated to clients not more than two hours before the giving of
judgment. The official version of the Judgment will be available from
time shorthand writers once it has been approved by the judge.
The court is likely to wish to hand down its judgment in an approved
final form. Counsel should therefore submit any list of typing
corrections and other obvious errors in writing (nil returns are
required) to time clerk to May 14 by fax to 0171 936 6467 by 12.00 noon
on Thursday 25 November 1999, so that changes can be incorporated, if
the Judge accepts them, In the handed down judgment. |
A lengthy consideration of facts which deal with the seizure and retention of
funds believed to be associated with drug trafficking, in the absence of any
party being convicted of a trafficking offence. However, the decision
could be extended to other property. An extract of the judgment is as
follows:
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In
my judgment, the court should not extend the law in the way suggested.
Although from the Chief Constable’s perspective the money is the
proceeds of crime, from another perspective the court should not, in my
view, countenance expropriation by a public authority of money or property
belonging to an individual for which there is no statutory authority.
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I
recognise that there may be circumstances where for a variety of reasons a
prosecution may not take place. But
that does not, in my view, justify expropriation by means of a defence to a
civil claim for return of money which has been seized from persons who are
not convicted.
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