#200 Beenleigh Evade Police

Join Wiseman Lawyers Traffic Lawyer Andrew Wiseman at Beenleigh Magistrates Court as he represents a client charged with Evade Police. Watch Andrew explain what happened in the courtroom, along with the outcome which he achieved and how he achieved it.

All right. Today, I'm at Beenleigh Magistrates Court. Client was charged with a number of offences. One of them being failed to stop or evade police. The other one, being repeat drink driving. It was his fifth drink driving, third in five years. And as well as repeat disqualified driving was his third disqualified driving charge. So I guess in order of seriousness, evade police is quite serious. The Newman government tighten the laws up on evade police or fail to stop. Basically, they changed it. So the only options the magistrate has is either a 50 penalty unit fine.

So penalty unit's currently around $130. So a $6,500 fine, or 50 days actual imprisonment. And the law actually states it must be served whole in a corrective facility. So the magistrate does not have the power to give a whole suspended sentence, or immediate parole, or an intensive correction order. It must literally be 50 days in a jail cell. So those are the only options. The $6,500 fine, or a 50 days in actual jail.

With regards to the repeat disqualified driving. I see people who unrepresented or with solicitors that don't specialise going to jail for their second and third disqualified driving. Unlike the evade police, there's no mandatory jail. That's not to say that, again, magistrates don't frequently bend people for their second or third disqualified driving but it's not mandatory. And unlike the evade police, the magistrate does have a discretion to give imprisonment to the whole suspended so it hangs over head for a period to actually going in or immediate parole meeting.

Today's technically your first court. Sorry. Today's technically your first day in jail, but you've been released. And now, you've just got to report to parole during the period. So your record shows that you've been to jail, but you never actually set foot in a cell. There is other variants available for the disqualified driving that aren't available on the evade police charge. With regards to the drink driving. Yeah, it was his fifth drink driving, third in five years. But it was low range. The two previous, for one low, one mid. So I'd be overstating it to suggest that he was at high risk of jail for the drink driving. But most certainly for the evade, very high risk. For the repeat disqualified driving, very high risk. So needless to say, my job today was one of avoiding imprisonment.

With regard to preparing, I got him to do the course that we get all of their clients to do. Got him to get references based on template. We give all of their clients to give to their referees, to guide them through who it needs to be addressed to, the key points they got to cover. But more importantly, was the written submissions of case law. Yeah, there was probably 10 or 12 cases that I referred to in the submissions on various sort of aspects. Because I had to address the evade police and why shouldn't go on for that. The repeat disqualified driving, and why shouldn't go on to that into that, et cetera.

It took me quite a bit of time to prepare, but basically, a summary of around 12 cases that none of them were entirely on point because most of them have people going to jail. But yeah, I would've found ones that I was able to present in a way that in my view, were of the same ilk, if that makes sense. Like some of the cases, for example, were talking about dangerous driving. And even though dangerous driving isn't the same charges of evade police. In my view, dangerous driving as an active behaviour is as serious, if not more so than evading police. So I guess there's a certain amount of, how would you say it... Analogy or comparison to scenarios.

It's not exactly the same. But when you look that holistically, it's the same type of behaviour, if that makes sense. It was pretty hard work because the prosecutor was pretty keen to have a matter adjourned off, which you realised that I wanted to drill down into the case law. She wanted an adjourned for a lengthy plea, and the magistrate was keen to stand it down until two o'clock and keep the client in the cells until then. But I was able to persuade the magistrate not to do that and just deal with it on the spot. Sometimes if you're on a roll, you need to just... Instead of firing the cannon all day, just pull to stop rifle out one shot and sit down and that's...

I could see where it was going. They wanted to either adjourn it or stand it down with the client so excited to said one final comment, you're on bang. And that was what won the magistrate over. So he didn't go to jail. He didn't get any imprisonment of any kind. He got that whopping rate fine for the evade police, but there's no way around that you either pay the $6,500 fine or you get to jail for 50 days, end of story. Besides, my job's not about saving fines, it's about saving licences or avoiding imprisonment.

So at the end of the day, if you don't want a fine, well, the option is go to jail. Obviously, most sensible people don't want to choose that option, but he does have that fine. He did get minor fines for the disqualified driving and the drink driving. But the evade police is a mandatory minimum two year disqualification. The disqualified driving is a mandatory two year disqualification. And your six low or mid in five years has a mandatory minimum six months disqualification. And because there's alcohol involved, it's accumulative.

So the absolute best case disqualification was today was four and a half years. Worst case was obviously going to jail. I got him the four and a half years. But that said, after two years, he can apply to the court, have his licence given back to him early. So anyone who gets disqualifications of two years or more after they've done two years can apply to get it back early. I mean, it's not an easy task, but if you haven't broke the law or any dealings with the police, and you've otherwise pulled your head in, you've got good prospects at getting it back early. So even though it's four and a half years, it may very well be till two years, if he behaves himself over the next two years. But ultimately, he did not go to jail. And as you would imagine, that was his greatest concern. Needless to say, he's very happy and relieved. I'm Andrew Wiseman at Beenleigh Magistrates Court. Thanks for watching.