Prison and driving ban for driver who lied about speeding offences - 09th February 2010
He had pleaded guilty to eight counts of attempting to pervert the course of public justice by employing tactics to delay the legal process and mislead the police in an attempt to avoid prosecution for eight speeding offences.
Prosecutor Claudette Elliott told the court that an earlier prosecution against Clark for a speeding offence had been dropped on a technicality and that he then went on to commit speeding offences between 14 April 2006 and 26 April 2009, including six in Bedford, one in Lincolnshire and one in West Yorkshire.
All of the offences were committed in the same company car. In response to requests from the police to nominate the driver of the vehicle at the time of the offences, Clark used a series of delaying tactics and disputed being the driver. He requested photographic evidence of the offences in order to help identify the driver at the time, which the police provided. On two occasions he named the driver as a French woman who had since returned to France. He also sent letters questioning the accuracy of the speed detection equipment and the timeliness of the Notice of Intended Prosecution sent in connection with the speeding offences.
Martin Rutherford, defending, said that over the course of three years, if Clark was ever apprehended by a camera it became a game for him to play with the authorities in the way that he did. He said: “It was always inevitable he would come to the attention of the courts. It is also inevitable that he would be caught for this. He had no idea of the seriousness of what he was doing. He does now.”
Judge Kay, QC, said: “It is a wide spread misconception that perverting the course of justice in this way is not that serious.” He said “It is serious because it interferes with the course of justice. You thought you could beat the system” and described Clark’s actions as a considerable waste of police time and public money.
He was sentenced to four months in prison for each of the offences, to run concurrently, and disqualified from driving for six months.
