Cole, R v

A guilty plea entered after informed advice and time for reflection will not be treated as involuntary merely because the defendant faced a difficult choice about advancing an account that might expose him or others to risk. Alleged disclosure failures cannot undermine the plea where the material sought would only support an account already within the defendant’s knowledge.

A substantial extension of time to challenge conviction requires an adequate explanation for delay and a compelling reason in the interests of justice. No extension should be granted where the proposed appeal is unarguable. A consent confiscation order will not ordinarily be reopened without a proper basis to challenge the agreement.

The applicant had pleaded guilty in the Crown Court at Manchester to four money-laundering arrangement offences and an offence of making or supplying articles for use in fraud. He later pleaded guilty to perverting the course of public justice and received a total sentence of five years and six months’ imprisonment.

Confiscation proceedings under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 resulted in an agreed order certifying benefit exceeding £4.3 million and ordering confiscation of £823,623. After an earlier sentence appeal had ended, the applicant sought extensions of time to seek leave to appeal against conviction and against the confiscation order. He contended that inadequate disclosure had prevented him from advancing his true account and that his guilty pleas were not voluntary.

1. Applications refused. The court refused both the application for a substantial extension of time to seek leave to appeal against conviction and the application concerning the confiscation order.
2. The proposed conviction appeal was unarguable. The applicant had been represented by experienced counsel and solicitors, received realistic advice, and had time to reflect before entering guilty pleas. His choice was difficult, but it was not exceptional. The pleas were voluntary admissions of guilt and there was no arguable exceptional reason to go behind them.
3. The alleged inadequacy of disclosure could not have affected the decision to plead guilty. The material which the applicant said disclosure might have produced could only have supported or confirmed his own account of events. That account was already peculiarly within his knowledge and could have been advanced at trial had he chosen to do so. Nor could any disclosure issue have altered the prosecution’s stance, since it rejected his account that he had not engaged in criminal activity.
4. There was also no adequate explanation for the delay of about two years and nine months. The later confiscation evidence did not explain the further delay, even assuming it supported the applicant. The practical difficulties of acting in person while imprisoned did not provide a compelling reason, in the interests of justice, to extend time. An extension would serve no purpose because the ultimate appeal was doomed to fail.
5. The proposed challenge to the confiscation order was likewise without basis. The applicant had agreed to the order through his advocate after the evidence on which he relied had been heard. His own clarification document treated the agreement as a pragmatic solution and did not deny consent. The agreement also avoided a finding of hidden assets, which had been his priority. In any event, the proposed grounds lacked merit because they did not address the basis of the prosecution case.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): In [2016] EWCA Crim 1745, refused renewed applications for extensions of time to seek leave to appeal against conviction and an agreed confiscation order.
• Crown Court at Manchester (Minshull Street): The applicant pleaded guilty in 2012, was sentenced to a total of five years and six months’ imprisonment, and later agreed the confiscation order.