LPC Law Notes > Criminal Litigation Notes
A more recent version of these Plea Before Venue, Allocation Of Trial And Committal Proceedings notes – written by Cambridge And Oxilp And College Of Law students – is available here.
The following is a more accessble plain text extract of the PDF sample above, taken from our Criminal Litigation Notes. Due to the challenges of extracting text from PDFs, it will have odd formatting:
Plea before venue, allocation of trial and committal proceedings 1) Plea before venue
What offences does this apply to?
Either way offences
What is the procedure for plea before venue?
1) Advance information is supplied to the defence to give the defendant a summary of the case against him.
2) The charge is written down and read to the defendant
3) Court will explain to the defendant he can indicate guilty or not guilty
4) Court will explain if pleads guilty, they will convict him but may send him to the crown court if their sentencing powers are inadequate
5) Defendant will indicate whether pleads guilty or not guilty:
Pleads guilty
Magistrates convict
Pleads not guilty or no plea entered
Magistrates proceed to allocation of trial
May commit to crown court to sentence - s.3 Powers of the Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000
Buy the full version of these notes or essay plans and more in our Criminal Litigation Notes.