Court mentions

First Court Appearance

If you are certain you want to plead not guilty then you or your solicitor should inform the court that "you plead not guilty" to the charge. If you intend to get a Solicitor for the hearing you should contact that solicitor to obtain their available dates prior to this mention.

If you are not represented by a solicitor you should refer to the registrar as "registrar". If you are represented by a solicitor there may be no need for you to appear at this mention, but you should check with your solicitor first.

Normally your matter will be adjourned for approximately 4-6 weeks to allow the Police enough time to prepare a brief of evidence. A brief of evidence contains all the evidence that the Police intend to rely upon at the hearing of the matter. Generally, Police are not able to call additional evidence that was not contained in the brief of evidence and served on you 28 days prior to the hearing.

Police do not always serve the brief of evidence upon you by the date allocated by the Registrar. This does not necessarily mean that they will not be able to serve the brief of evidence on you later. Normally, if the Police provide a reasonable excuse for not serving the brief upon you, the Registrar will give the Police further time to serve it. It may be possible to get your legal costs paid by the Police Force if they do not serve the brief upon you when they should have.