Module name: Legal skills

Skeleton argument of the appellant
Introduction
This appeal brought by R, claims that court of jurisdiction must not invalided the order for confiscation due to procedural issues for the process. The appellant states that even the court was not held and postponed for several times, confiscation proceedings should not be ignored under the section 14 (12) of Proceeds of Crime Act 2002². `

Background

The respondent was sentenced to imprisonment for five years and four months, on account of having and supplying drugs and laundering money on 16 July 2012. Meanwhile, the court decided to confiscate respondent’s property under section 27 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971³. But confiscation proceedings did not take place due to some technical and timetable issues. By virtue of late respondent’s information in September, which should have been provided in August, CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) could not serve the section 16 and had left this case for a year without inspection. This case was raised in October 2013. The case was considered to be solved on 7 January 2014, but Crown statement did not serve until 15 January and the was officer was not approached and the hearing was canceled. On 31 March the hearing was aborted, because CPS failed to get the advocate and register the date. On 7 May 2014 the special hearing was dealt; however, the judge cancelled the defense argument and make an order that the respondent should pay $57,458 on 9 June 2014. But confiscation order was quashed.⁴

Submissions

The court of appeal claimed that confiscation order should not be infringed by procedural issues, it should be continued as there was no unfairness in accordance with relevant sections of POCA (hereinafter sections).⁵

1. 
   The section 14 (8) was misused, as the initial postponement was not expired, an extension was disapplied. In order to reacquire section’s 14 (8) power, the section 14 (11), which states confiscation order must not be quashed, should be available. However, this section was inefficient by the virtue of section 14 (12), which allows to disapply the order in case of some issues.⁶
   
2. 
   As section 14 (11) became unavailable owing to section 14 (12), section 14 (12) can make the confiscation order cancelled wholly, because of technical error. But this is not the necessity and power of the section 14 (12). The court should make a confiscation order pursuant to POCA⁷ and the Criminal Justice Act 1988⁸.⁹
   
3. 
   The original postponement was expired by December 2012, which infringed the section 14 (8). The Crown should have extended the period before that time, but it did not happen. In order to tackle this problem, Mr Hall QC offered an alternative analysis, which meant that original postponement would be efficient for two weeks until both parties provided information. Thus, the original postponement saved its validity until 2013. As a result, the fairness of jurisdiction was not used inappropriately.¹⁰
   
4. 
   Even though there was a failure of a section 14 (8), the court can order the extension by its motion under the section 14 (7). Because section 14 (7) allows court to postpone or extend the period of postponement, not only party.¹¹
   
5. 
   The case R v Neish [2012] EWCA Crim 1011; [2010] 1 WLR 2395¹² is a good illustration of procedural errors which are related to timetable and how this issue was solved. The original postponement of forfeiture should have been held about five months after sentence. The judge organized two courts in one day by mistake. After informing this situation to listing officer, the confiscation process was postponed for three weeks. This case clearly demonstrates that the court could had a legitimate postponement and could deal with confiscation process regardless of time table issues.¹³
   

Conclusion

The court of appeal requires from the Supreme court for a permission to apply an appeal regarding to submissions mentioned above.