Boughton -Fox v R.
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
- LORD JUSTICE PITCHFORD
- MR JUSTICE WILKIE
- MRS JUSTICE PATTERSON
Areas of Law
- Criminal Law and Procedure
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
Mr. Boughton-Fox, convicted of Conspiracy to Defraud, appealed firstly against his conviction and the confiscation order under POCA 2002. The court denied the second appeal against conviction but acknowledged the confiscation order under POCA was incorrect, opting to consider a substitute order under CJA 1988.
Judgment
MR JUSTICE WILKIE:
Introduction and issues.
This Court has to deal with the following issues:
A renewed application by Mr Boughton-Fox seeking leave to appeal against his conviction.
The appeal with leave by Mr Boughton-Fox against the confiscation order made under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 on 21 st March 2012.
In the event of that appeal being allowed, the question in principle, whether this Court should consider making a substitute confiscation order pursuant to the Criminal Justice Act 1988.
In the event that this Court decides in principle to do so, to give directions for a substantive hearing on the question what the content of such substituted order should be.
Brief Chronology of the proceedings.
Mr Boughton-Fox and Jonathon Mathew Parrish were tried on indictment at the Crown Court sitting at Ipswich for a period of 10 weeks commencing 24 th January 2011. Both were convicted of the single count of Conspiracy to Defraud and, on 27 th April 2011, Mr Parrish was sentenced to 5 years and 6 months imprisonment and Boughton-Fox to 7 years imprisonment. Both were disqualified from acting as company directors for a period of 7 years pursuant to Section 2 of the Companies Directors Disqualification Act 1986.
Mr Boughton-Fox sought leave to appeal against conviction and sentence. Those applications were refused by the Single Judge who characterised them as wholly without merit. Notwithstanding the warning that, were the applications for leave renewed, the court may direct that time spent in custody as an appellant should not count towards sentence, the applicant renewed his application for leave to appeal against both conviction and sentence.
Those renewed applications were considered by the Full Court on 4 th May 2012. In the course of her judgment, Lady Justice Rafferty summarised the renewed grounds of appeal against conviction in six short statements; four of them asserted that the summing up was deficient in various ways. The fifth was that inadmissible evidence was given, cross-examined and referred to in the summing up and the sixth was that Mr Boughton-Fox’s legal team failed to seek or to call any evidence in support of him; as a consequence his conviction was unsafe.
The Full Court refused the renewed applications for leave to appeal against sentence and against conviction and deducted 28 days from the time served.
The application for leave to appeal conviction for a second time.
At that point, in accordance with conventi