What to watch Part 1? Click here.
What is a Section 10? (Part 2)
Now, everybody wants a Section 10 and the question is well how do you get a Section 10?
The first thing to say about that is that there is no magic formula I can give you to make sure that the court will give you a Section 10 if you are pleading guilty to an offence. But what I can do and what I will do is give you some very good guidelines as to some of the most important things that you need to think about or that the court will think about when he’s determining whether or not you in your particular case deserve a Section 10. What, why, and how; let me just explain those in turn.
The ‘What’ stands for what happened. That’s the first thing the court wants to know what happened. The second is the ‘Why’. Why did it happen? And the third thing is how will you stop it from happening again.
In terms of the, what happened, the court will look at a whole range of things when determining what actually happened and how you committed the offence and really what the court is looking is to decide how serious your particular offence was in comparison with other offences of that type.
The two main things that the court will look at in determining what happened or how serious the offence is, is firstly the actual charge you have been charged with or actual offence you’ve been charged with.
So let me give you some examples. For example, if you were caught with some drugs, the police might have charged you with supplying a prohibited drug. Now, you might say I agree I had the drugs in my possession, but it was for personal use. It wasn’t for supply. That would mean that you shouldn’t be pleading guilty to supplying a prohibited drug but rather possessing the prohibited drug. And the difference is very substantial between those two offences. You’re much more likely to get a Section 10 in respect of a possessed offence than in respect of a supply offence.
So that’s the first thing under the ‘What’ heading, the actual charge. The second thing is the facts. So the court will, once it knows what the offence is, it will want to know the exact facts as to how that offence was committed and the circumstances in which it was committed.
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