Indictments. Specimen or Sample Counts Flashcards
Specimen or Sample Counts
Where a person is accused of adopting a systematic course of criminal conduct, and where it is not appropriate to allege a continuous offence, or a multiple offending count, the prosecution sometimes proceed by way of specimen or sample counts.
where the allegation was of repeated rapes over a two-year period, the Court considered that the indictment was best framed either with a count of rape, followed by two or three counts alleging rape ‘on an occasion other than’ the preceding counts, or through a multiple incident count which referred to ‘rape on at least X occasions’.
The choice of count will depend on the particular circumstances of the case and should be determined bearing in mind the implications for sentencing set out in Canavan,
Procedure for Specimen Counts
The practice which the prosecution ought to adopt in these circumstances is as follows:
(a) the defence should be provided with a list of all the similar offences of which it is alleged that those selected in the indictment are samples;
(b) evidence of some or all of these additional offences may in appropriate cases be led as evidence of system;
(c) in other cases, the additional offences need not be referred to until after a verdict of guilty upon the sample offence is returned
Potential Problems with Specimen Counts
Potential problems arise with specimen counts in relation to sentencing because the accused should not thereby be denied the right to be tried by a jury for offending for which the accused may ultimately be sentenced.
In any event, it is crucial that the accused should know the case he or she has to meet.
the Court of Appeal emphasised that the indictment had to be drafted in such a way as to enable the accused to know, with as much particularity as the circumstances would admit, what case the accused had to meet.
