Bayliss v The Parole Board of England And Wales & Anor
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
- LADY JUSTICE RAFFERTY
Areas of Law
- Criminal Law and Procedure
- Human Rights Law
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
Lee Bayliss, who was sentenced to an indeterminate term for causing death by dangerous driving, sought damages claiming that his post-tariff detention was unlawful following the quashing of his sentence by the Court of Appeal. The court dismissed his appeal, ruling that detention was lawful until the sentence was quashed, and found that post-tariff unlawful detention claims should be directed at the Secretary of State, not the Parole Board.
Judgment
Sir Brian Leveson P:
As long ago as 5 th February 2013, Geraldine Andrews Q.C. (as she then was) dismissed a renewed application by Lee Bayliss for permission to apply for judicial review of a decision of the Parole Board in relation to his continued detention following a sentence of imprisonment for public protection with a minimum term of 2 years which had been imposed on 30 th June 2006. The original application (rejected on paper) was made while he was still in custody but, on 15 th November 2012, shortly prior to its renewal application, the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) quashed the indeterminate sentence which led to his release; this resulted in the claim being restricted to a claim for damages on the grounds that his detention after the expiry of the minimum term had been unlawful and was incompatible with Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights (‘ECHR’). This claim was pursued only against the Parole Board.
Permission to appeal was refused by Underhill LJ but, on renewal, the full court (Sir Terence Etherton C and Fulford LJ) granted leave on one only of the six grounds advanced, namely whether, when the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) decides that an indeterminate sentence should not have been imposed in the first place, because, for instance, the criteria were not satisfied, any period of post-tariff detention was or may have been “arbitrary” in nature, thereby offending Article 5. It is to be noted that these grounds could not possibly have been advanced at the initiation of this application for judicial review. To deal with it, the Secretary of State for Justice was joined as a second respondent to the appeal.
The Background
On 30th June 2006, at the Crown Court at Oxford, before His Honour Judge Hall, the appellant pleaded guilty to offences of aggravated vehicle taking, causing death by dangerous driving and driving whilst disqualified. Having on 20th April 2006 taken a motor vehicle without the consent of its owner, two days later, he drove dangerously and at high speed over a bridge approaching Wytham in Oxfordshire. He lost control of the car and struck a stone wall, killing his passenger, Susan Fenton, and suffering comparatively serious injury himself. The judge described the incident in these terms:
"This was a dreadful bit of driving. You killed your best friend but you killed her in circumstances where the way you were driving was patently obviously dangerous. That road is single-carriageway; it