Criminal Damage

[tncb]

What could sentencing be for criminal damage, recklessly endangering life and driving a motor vehicle dangerously when pleading guilty with diminished responsibility due to mental health problems?

[FredPuli43]

Diminished responsibility is only a defence to murder (it makes it manslaughter) but there are circumstances when it can be some mitigation. The plea of guilty reduces the sentence which would have been passed on conviction by a substantial amount.

That said, you don't give any details. What do the prosecution say the facts are? What happened to give rise to the separate charges? Without that, it is impossible to advise.

[tncb]

that what his solicitor said his plea would be makes sense now as to why i could only find info on homicide with that plea.
He suffers from mental health problems to many to mention and was having one of his bad patches and basically tried crashing his car into a wall to end his life but ended up hitting a police vehicle with an officer inside. He has had 2 separate psychiatric reports done since being held on remand
(he has been on remand since the accident happened & will stay there until a plea hearing) the psychiatric reports have confirmed that he was not in a fit state of mind at the the time accident

[FredPuli43]

So it is really one incident but the CPS have charged as two. Well, there's certain sense in that, but personally , I would advise him to plead guilty to dangerous driving only and not guilty to the aggravated criminal damage. Two reasons 1) while the offence is not just with intent to endanger life, but committing damage recklessly and being reckless as to whether life would be endangered, too, I think that the plea to the one is quite sufficient and is adequate for the court's purposes and the prosecution's 2) the plea of not guilty need not be an acquittal on that count . The prosecution would invite the judge to "leave it on the file, not to be proceeded with without leave of the court or the Court of Appeal". In theory, it could be revived but, obviously, it won't be. This satisfies all sides.

But it's not my case and the defendant must be guided by counsel.

As to sentence, well just so long (extremely unlikely indeed) as nobody pleads not guilty by reason of insanity (result: instant incarceration in a mental hospital; not good in this case, the terms being very strict); and I hope nobody is foolish enough to consider that here (!) the mental history is important and helpful. The Court will need to be satisfied that, with treatment, the defendant doesn't present a danger to the public. Some form of hospital order is therefore likely, that being established, and the case is taken out of the category of sentencing for someone who is not so suffering

[FredPuli43]

Perhaps I should have explained point one more fully. In my view, though technically permissible where one verdict is alternative; it'e either one charge or the other but not both; or where the two offences are quite separate in time or place, not overlapping, this case is not one. Charging someone with dangerous driving with criminal damage too, because they crashed the car into something when doing the driving is absurd. If that made sense almost every reckless/ danerous driver would face two charges. It doesn't and they don't.

That the charge is criminal damage with the recklessness whether life would be endangered makes no difference. Every dangerous driver drives in a way which is at least reckless whether life is endangered; that's really the definition of dangerous, that the driving presents an obvious danger, to anyone who could see it, of injury to someone, and most such drivers are reckless whether that injury is fatal or not. They are not thinking of such niceties.

Therefore the dangerous driving encompasses both charges ,and should be admitted by guilty plea but the aggravated criminal damage not admitted, by a plea of not guity . It should not be proceeded with, as above.

(If serious injury was occasioned after December 8, 2012, there is a new section , creating a specific offence which covers that, s1A of the Road Trafic Act 1988)

[tncb]

The officer did have a few bruises and a cut on his head nothing major though. Thank you for you answers :)