Avoiding Prison for Assaulting a Police Officer Following Drink Driving

Two hundred and sixty miles separate Bodmin Magistrates’ Court in Cornwall from Lincoln Magistrates’ Court in Lincolnshire. Our client, a man we shall call Owen to protect his confidentiality, stood in the dock at both. Between those two hearings lay several weeks in which the outcome of his case, and quite possibly his liberty, hung in the balance. This is the story of how careful, specialist mitigation work turned what looked like a near-certain prison sentence into a community-based outcome that let Owen keep his business, his home, and his family intact.

At Kang & Co Solicitors, a significant proportion of the clients who instruct our criminal defence solicitors are not looking for a lawyer to fight their case at trial. Many contact us already knowing, in their own mind, that they intend to plead guilty to an assault on a police constable, a drink-driving charge, or another criminal matter. What they want is honest, specialist legal advice to confirm that pleading guilty is genuinely the right course, representation from a solicitor who knows the sentencing guidelines inside out, and, above all, the very best chance of walking out of court with their liberty intact. Owen’s case is a striking example of exactly that kind of instruction, and of how much difference the quality of legal advice and case preparation can make to whether a client goes to prison.

Owen’s name and other identifying details have been changed throughout this case study to protect his confidentiality. The facts, the legal issues, and the outcome, however, are a true reflection of the work we carried out on his behalf.

A Bad Night in Cornwall

Owen ran his own small construction business, supplying a tight-knit team of subcontractors to larger building firms around the country. It was work that took him away from home for days, sometimes weeks, at a stretch. On one such trip, while working near Carlyon Bay close to St Austell in Cornwall, Owen spent the day drinking on the beach. Later, he took cocaine. By his own account, the combination left him confused, paranoid, and barely in control of himself.

That evening, Owen got behind the wheel of his work van and drove a short distance around a beach car park. A member of the public watching from a nearby vehicle was alarmed enough by his driving to call the police. When officers arrived, Owen ran. He was chased on foot, caught, and arrested on suspicion of driving with excess alcohol. Then, while officers were adjusting his handcuffs to make him more comfortable, Owen turned and struck one of them to the face with a closed fist. A second arrest followed, this time for assaulting a police officer.

By the time he called us, Owen was facing two charges. The first was driving a motor vehicle with excess alcohol, contrary to section 5(1)(a) of the Road Traffic Act 1988 and Schedule 2 to the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988, an offence committed where a person drives on a road or public place after consuming so much alcohol that the proportion of it in their breath exceeds the prescribed limit of 35 microgrammes in 100 millilitres of breath. The second, and by far the more serious, was assaulting a constable in the execution of his duty, contrary to section 89(1) of the Police Act 1996.

What Is the Offence of Assaulting a Police Constable?

Assaulting a constable in the execution of his or her duty, under section 89(1) of the Police Act 1996, is committed where a person unlawfully applies force to a police officer who is, at the time, lawfully carrying out his or her duties. It is a summary-only offence, meaning it is dealt with in the magistrates’ court rather than the Crown Court, and it carries a maximum sentence of six months’ imprisonment. It is often confused with the newer offence of assaulting an emergency worker, introduced by the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018, which carries a higher maximum sentence of two years’ imprisonment and can apply to a wider range of emergency service personnel. Whether a case is charged under the older or the newer legislation can make a real difference to the sentence a client is exposed to, which is exactly the kind of detail a specialist criminal defence solicitor will scrutinise closely from the outset.

Why We Told Owen the Truth About His Case

Owen came to us frightened. He was worried about the charges, worried about what a conviction would mean for his business, and, most of all, worried about prison. What he wanted from us was not false reassurance but a straight, expert answer to a simple question: how bad is this, really, and what can be done about it? That is a conversation we have with clients time and again at Kang & Co. Many of the people who instruct our criminal defence solicitors are not disputing that something happened. They need a lawyer who will look dispassionately at the strength of the evidence, tell them the truth about their options, and then fight hard for the best result once the plea has been decided.

Having gone through the prosecution evidence line by line, our advice to Owen was blunt. The case against him was strong on both counts, and there was no credible route to a not guilty plea. An independent witness had watched him driving erratically and described him swapping seats with a colleague after the van came to a stop, a detail that only made sense if Owen had genuinely been behind the wheel. Owen accepted, once we had taken full instructions, that the witness was right. His evidential breath test came back at 43 microgrammes, well over the legal limit of 35, and nothing in the paperwork suggested any flaw in how the test had been carried out.

The evidence on the assault was, if anything, harder to escape. Body-worn camera footage, which Owen had already seen at the police station, showed him swinging his arm and striking the officer. He did not try to argue that the footage was wrong or misleading. He had also made clear admissions in his police interview, telling officers he had been drinking and taking drugs, that he should not have been driving, and that what he had done to the officer was unacceptable. He had even apologised to the arresting officers at the time, in the heat of the moment.

Why a Trial Would Have Made Everything Worse

Part of our job as specialist criminal defence solicitors is to hunt for any genuine weakness in the prosecution case before advising a client to plead guilty, and we did exactly that for Owen. We looked closely at whether self-defence might realistically be argued, given that he had been subjected to force by a different officer earlier in the incident. But the punch that formed the charge came later, in a calmer, more static moment, while an officer was simply trying to reposition his handcuffs for comfort. Self-defence requires an honest belief in the need to use force against an imminent threat, and a response that is reasonable in the circumstances. On the footage, and on Owen’s own account, that argument had no realistic prospect of succeeding before a court.

We were equally candid with Owen about a second problem: his own memory. By his own admission, his recollection of the assault was hazy at best, precisely because of how much drink and cocaine he had consumed that day. Imagine asking a bench of magistrates to prefer that account over the evidence of a sober police officer, acting in the course of his duty, with body-worn footage backing him up. It is not a contest a defendant can realistically win, and running it anyway would have stripped Owen of any credit for a guilty plea while making the eventual sentence considerably worse.

Then there was the fact that made Owen’s case genuinely difficult. Only months before this incident, he had been convicted of two counts of the identical offence, assaulting a constable under section 89(1) of the Police Act 1996, following an unrelated matter. He had pleaded guilty then, too. Contesting what was, on any fair reading, a strikingly similar allegation so soon after admitting to the same category of offending would have done real damage to his credibility and turned an already difficult case into an almost impossible one.

Weighing all of this together, we advised Owen that there was no viable defence to either charge, and that his best and only sensible course was to plead guilty to both at the earliest opportunity. An early guilty plea would secure him the maximum available credit of up to one-third off his sentence. Fighting a case he could not win would only have increased the eventual sentence, added unnecessary cost and delay, and stripped away that credit entirely. Owen accepted the advice without hesitation.

How Much Prison Time Can You Get for Assaulting a Police Officer?

Section 89(1) of the Police Act 1996 carries a maximum sentence of six months’ imprisonment. A single, isolated assault of this kind, met with an early guilty plea, does not automatically mean prison. Owen’s case, however, carried two aggravating features that pushed it much closer to the custodial line, and it is worth setting these out because they are exactly the kind of factors a court will weigh when deciding whether someone convicted of assaulting a police officer should go to prison.

First, this was not his first time. He had a previous conviction for the exact same offence, from only a matter of months earlier, which had also involved alcohol and had resulted in a community order with a rehabilitation requirement and an alcohol monitoring condition attached. A court sentencing a defendant for repeating precisely the same kind of offending within such a short space of time is entitled, and likely, to see that as a pattern rather than a one-off mistake, and patterns push sentences upward.

Second, and more seriously still, Owen was still actively serving that earlier community order when this fresh offence took place. Committing a further, similar offence while still under sentence for the last one is a significant aggravating factor in its own right. It tells a court that the previous sentence has not worked, and it strengthens the argument for something tougher this time, potentially including immediate custody. We did not soften this for Owen. We told him plainly that, without a carefully prepared and properly evidenced mitigation case, he was facing a real and substantial risk of going to prison.

Can You Avoid Prison for Assaulting a Police Officer? Building the Mitigation Case

With the plea decided, our entire focus shifted to mitigation, and this is where, in our experience, specialist representation earns its keep. A guilty plea alone does not keep a client out of prison. What can make the difference is putting compelling, credible, properly evidenced material in front of the court, and that takes time, planning, and knowing exactly what a bench needs to see.

Because we gave Owen this advice early and because he had weeks rather than minutes to act on it, he was able to build a genuinely strong package. He wrote a heartfelt letter of apology to the officer he had assaulted, accepting full responsibility without excuse and setting out the steps he had already taken to address his drinking and drug use. We obtained supporting letters from two of his subcontracted workers, explaining just how much they relied on the work Owen provided and what losing that income would mean for their own families. We worked with Owen’s partner to gather a letter and supporting financial evidence showing how much of the household’s outgoings depended on his earnings, and what a prison sentence would mean for her and their young child. Owen’s father provided a further statement setting out the financial reality for the family business if Owen were suddenly unable to run it.

On our advice, Owen also contacted his GP and obtained written confirmation that he had been referred for assessment in relation to his mental health and a possible ADHD diagnosis, giving the court objective, independent evidence that he was genuinely engaging with help rather than simply claiming to be, after the fact. Throughout this period, we stayed in close and repeated contact with the probation service, pressing for a full pre-sentence report to be prepared ahead of the hearing wherever possible, so that Owen’s compliance with his existing order, and the fact that he had not been breached, was properly recorded and placed before the sentencing court in the clearest possible form.

Two Courts, Two Hundred and Sixty Miles Apart

Kang & Co Solicitors is a privately funded criminal and motoring defence practice with offices in Birmingham, London, and Milton Keynes, and we regularly represent clients at magistrates’ and Crown Courts right across England, wherever a case happens to take us. Owen’s case is a good example of that reach in practice. His first appearance took place at Bodmin Magistrates’ Court in Cornwall, close to where the offence had happened. There, our instructed barrister entered guilty pleas to both charges and successfully applied for the case to be adjourned, both so Owen could complete the mental health assessment we had recommended, and so the case could be transferred to a court nearer his home in Lincolnshire, where local probation already knew him.

That application succeeded, and Owen’s sentencing hearing was relisted at Lincoln Magistrates’ Court. Over the course of a single case, we represented Owen at two courts on opposite sides of England, coordinating between our office, his instructed barrister, and Owen himself throughout, so that the quality of preparation and advice never dropped, wherever the case happened to be sitting.

The Day of Reckoning

At the sentencing hearing before Lincoln Magistrates’ Court, our barrister put the full mitigation case we had built to the bench. The facts were not disputed. The apology letter was read aloud in court. The supporting letters we had helped Owen gather, including one further reference produced on the morning of the hearing itself, were handed up for the magistrates to read. It was submitted that, despite the seriousness of Owen’s record, the custody threshold had not, on balance, been crossed.

The magistrates retired to consider their decision. When they returned, they acknowledged that alcohol had played a significant part in the offending, and they gave Owen full credit for his early guilty pleas. Weighing the strength of the mitigation against the seriousness of his record, they concluded that a community-based sentence, rather than immediate custody, was the right outcome.

The Outcome

Owen was sentenced to a community order with an alcohol abstinence and monitoring requirement, together with a financial penalty made up of a fine, prosecution costs, a statutory victim surcharge, and compensation payable directly to the officer he had assaulted, totalling just over two thousand pounds, payable by manageable monthly instalments. On the drink driving charge, he received a twelve-month driving disqualification, but the court also offered him a place on a drink drive rehabilitation course which, if completed successfully, would shorten that ban.

No custodial sentence, immediate or suspended, was imposed. Given that this was Owen’s second conviction for an identical offence within a matter of months, and that he was still subject to an existing community order at the time he committed it, this was, in our honest professional assessment, a genuinely favourable result, and one that reflected the depth and strength of the mitigation case we had built for him.

What Owen’s Case Shows

Owen’s case is a good illustration of the work we do every week at Kang & Co. Many of our clients are not looking to fight their charges. They are frightened, understandably so, of what a prison sentence would mean for them and for the people who depend on them, and they want a specialist criminal defence solicitor who will tell them the truth about the evidence, advise them clearly on plea, and then work relentlessly to secure the most lenient sentence realistically available.

It is worth pausing to imagine what Owen’s case might have looked like without early, specialist legal advice. A defendant relying on a duty solicitor at court, rather than instructing a specialist criminal defence solicitor in advance, typically has only a few minutes to explain their case before a first hearing, with little or no time to understand the sentencing guidelines that will decide their fate, let alone to identify, gather, and present the kind of detailed mitigation evidence that made the difference for Owen. A duty solicitor, however capable, simply does not have the weeks we had to build a mitigation package drawing on letters from Owen’s family, his employees, his GP, and the probation service. Given how significantly Owen’s risk of prison was raised by his very recent previous conviction for the identical offence, and by the fact that he was still serving a community order when he offended again, we believe the time we gave him to prepare, and the guidance we gave him on exactly what evidence would help, played a genuine part in the outcome he received.

This case also reflects who we are as a firm. We represented Owen seamlessly from his first appearance in Cornwall through to his sentencing hearing in Lincolnshire, giving him the same specialist advice and the same level of preparation throughout, wherever in the country his case needed to be heard.

At Kang & Co Solicitors, we understand exactly how frightening it is to face criminal proceedings, particularly for a client who already knows they intend to plead guilty and simply wants the best possible chance of staying out of prison. Owen’s case shows what early, specialist advice, careful preparation, and a properly built mitigation case can achieve, even when the odds look stacked against a client from the outset.