The mystery of the disappearing appeal
The Crown Court declines to hear my appeal — but on a materially incomplete factual basis — which is a recurring pattern of foreclosure of access to supervision and review in criminal cases
How a £fine became a constitutional test
Many of my readers will be familiar with my long-running legal saga, which operates at three distinct levels:
A personal conviction for a minor motoring matter, notwithstanding the absence of any personalised accusation of wrongdoing, and notwithstanding that the prosecution’s own material is, in my view, exculpatory.
A challenge to the “ghost court” in my own case, whose legal identity and nature remain indeterminate. A judicial review to stay enforcement pending adjudication of this issue was refused on the papers, with an oral renewal hearing listed in March.
A broader constitutional challenge concerning unattributed coercive power: the point at which administrative process and automation outrun lawful authority. An in-progress Part 8 claim seeks clarity on attribution and seisin under the Single Justice Procedure.
What is at stake is not merely whether the state can secure convictions via procedural abuse. It is whether judicial power can be exercised in the name of procedure, IT labels, or administrative convenience, rather than statutory authority traceable to law. Historically this boundary has been hard-edged. Automation has placed it under growing pressure.
The latest development is a written refusal by the Crown Court to permit an appeal. This is of public importance not as a personal grievance, but because it appears to form part of a recurring pattern: challenges to the lawful basis of coercive power are repeatedly foreclosed on the basis of an asserted procedural history which does not align with the record.
My task is to document these events with precision. My aim is not rhetorical outrage, nor even a personal remedy, but to make the system legible — and to demonstrate, by evidence, how review and supervision can be closed off in practice even where the rule of law requires them.
In doing so, I place myself in a vulnerable position. I am refusing to concede jurisdiction that cannot be demonstrated, and I am accepting tactical losses (including declining to contest matters on their merits), and hardship (court fees, legal work, stress, fines), in order to expose the procedural assumptions and attribution gaps that normally lurk unexamined.
I thank those readers who have stood beside me throughout this turmoil;
your support and loyalty are deeply appreciated.
While the legal issue may seem technical, the constitutional implications are not.
Choose your door. Hope it opens.
As most of my readers are based in the USA, the details of the UK court structure may not be familiar. Minor convictions are dealt with in magistrates’ courts, which have been streamlined through the Single Justice Procedure. This allows uncontested cases — where imprisonment is not available (only fines) — to be determined on the papers by a single justice of the peace sitting with a legal adviser, outside open court.
Appeals “on the merits” from the magistrates’ court are ordinarily heard by the Crown Court. The Crown Court is also where serious criminal trials take place, including jury trials. By contrast, challenges based on legal error are heard in the High Court by a different route, known as “Case Stated”.
My own matter potentially engages both routes — merits and law — but statute forces you into a forked choice. I chose to prioritise the Case Stated route, because it has wider constitutional significance than a personal merits appeal, even though it is slower, more technical, and easier for the system to frustrate.
I filed the appropriate paperwork in time last summer requesting that the magistrates’ court “state a case” for the opinion of the High Court. That application was not processed. The magistrates’ court had a statutory duty either to transmit the case to the High Court, or to refuse it formally on the basis that it was frivolous. It did neither — even after I served a pre-action letter in preparation for judicial review seeking an order of mandamus (i.e. a court order compelling a public body to perform its legal duty).
Meanwhile, conscious that administrative silence had already become a pattern, I filed a protective Crown Court appeal within time, to preserve my position. This ensured that I could not later be accused of having accepted the conviction “on the merits” by default. In other words: I have been procedurally clean and compliant throughout.
I challenged jurisdiction from the outset, including at a pre-trial hearing. No authority has yet explained the legal identity of the “ghost court”. It ignored pre-trial action letters, and it took no steps to resolve the jurisdiction issue before proceeding to conviction and enforcement.
The right to know which court is coercing you, under what authority, and by what lawful act is not a “freeman of the land” trope or a “sovereign citizen” argument.
It is a fundamental civil right.
Appeal by void
In the interim, I also pursued a section 142 hearing. This is the mechanism by which a magistrates’ court may re-open a case in order to correct injustice. The hearing was held last September, and the judge directed me towards the High Court.
Given the practical futility of pursuing Case Stated through an uncooperative lower court, I opted instead to bring a Part 8 claim directly in the High Court to determine the law on “ghost courts”, with the intention that any ruling could then be applied to my own case. I therefore began pre-action correspondence with the Government Legal Department, which — to their credit — they engaged with fully. I respect that.
Meanwhile, enforcement resumed. I was therefore exposed to escalation of enforcement for non-payment of a fine, notwithstanding that I had active proceedings and had taken steps to appeal.
A Case Stated application does not automatically stay enforcement. However, it does provide a forum in which a stay may be sought, and it is normally assumed that enforcement will not race ahead of adjudication when lawful supervision is being pursued.
Pay now. Attribution later.
Here, enforcement continued in circumstances where there was still no determinative instrument identifying which court had supposedly exercised judicial power, and no properly served notice of any judicial act capable of being reviewed. Instead, I was faced with secondary administrative and IT-generated demands for payment, without any primary instrument establishing the tribunal, the jurisdiction, or the judicial act.
That distinction matters when the legal identity of the court itself — and its establishment as a tribunal under law — is what is being contested.
Accordingly, in order to
restore the correct sequencing (adjudication before enforcement) and the proper hierarchy of courts (supervisory above lower), and to
avoid the dual burden of simultaneously litigating a Part 8 claim while resisting enforcement,
I filed a judicial review.
This judicial review was deliberately minimalist. It did not seek to quash any conviction, nor to force the High Court to determine the constitutional question prematurely. It sought only interim relief: a stay of enforcement, so that the normal statutory routes to challenge and supervision could operate.
Permission for that judicial review was refused in December. The crucial detail is why: I was told, in effect, that I had not exhausted alternative remedies.
Exit denied. Try another exit.
This is where the procedural picture becomes confused.
The Summary Grounds of Defence suggested that I had not appealed the conviction. That was incorrect. I had invoked the Case Stated route under section 111 of the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980. What I had not pursued substantively was a Crown Court appeal on the merits. The distinction matters.
This mischaracterisation of the procedural history was corrected in my Reply.
It is also important to note that a person is not required to appeal a conviction in order to contest the lawfulness of enforcement. The legitimacy of enforcement depends on the existence of a valid judicial act, not on whether the subject has exhausted every conceivable appellate pathway.
To put it plainly: if a person is imprisoned without a lawful warrant of committal, the answer is not that they should have appealed the conviction, nor that the prison is well run. The question is whether the state can produce the lawful instrument authorising detention. If it cannot, the detention cannot stand.
The refusal Order in the judicial review proceedings adopted the Defence’s account of the procedural history. It proceeded on the basis that I had failed to pursue an appeal, and concluded that judicial review was inappropriate because an appeal to the Crown Court constituted an adequate alternative remedy.
That reasoning left only one course: to re-activate the Crown Court pathway, either to demonstrate that it was indeed a viable alternative remedy, or to establish that it was not.
Although technically out of time, I had lodged a protective notice within the original appeal window in order to preserve my position pending the outcome of the other proceedings. Any subsequent delay was the product of procedural sequencing and ongoing litigation, not neglect.
The grounds of appeal were framed as follows:
Whether the proceedings were lawfully commenced on any proper factual or legal basis and the court was properly seised;
whether there were serious procedural irregularities and abuse of process (including defective service and non-disclosure of exculpatory material); and
whether the evidence was sufficient to establish any offence under section 172 Road Traffic Act 1988.
I also made explicit that:
The appeal also raises whether antecedent jurisdictional and procedural defects prevented the magistrates’ court from lawfully determining those issues.
In other words, the constitutional dimension was clearly flagged.
Crucially, I set out the procedural history in detail to explain why the appeal was technically out of time but should nevertheless be permitted:
This appeal is out of time because, following the recording of the conviction and sentence, I pursued other statutory and supervisory remedies in good faith, including an application under section 142 Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980, an application for a Case Stated under section 111 Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980 (which was not processed or refused), and judicial review proceedings concerning enforcement action.
A conditional notice indicating an intention to appeal to the Crown Court was sent within the original appeal period to preserve my position pending the outcome of those proceedings.
Permission for judicial review was refused on the basis that an appeal to the Crown Court was the appropriate alternative remedy. This appeal has been lodged promptly thereafter.
I did not delay wilfully and have acted at all times to preserve my rights and pursue the appropriate procedural route as directed.
The application therefore made clear that the Case Stated route had been invoked but had not progressed, through no fault of my own.
The question, then, is how the Crown Court dealt with that record.
Choose one. Lose both.
Let us examine the refusal letter itself.
Mr Geddes was convicted and sentenced in the magistrates’ court on 11 June 2025.
On 25 June 2025, and within the time limits required, he lodged what he asserted to be a “conditional notice of appeal” – purportedly made under s.108 MCA 1980. In law and fact, that was not a notice of appeal. On its face, it expressly asserts that it is NOT a notice of appeal. To be one, it must comply with the requirements of CrimPR 34.3. It does not come close to complying.
So far, this is correct. I did not file a substantive Crown Court appeal within time. I deliberately lodged a protective marker as an indication of intent, because Parliament does not permit simultaneous pursuit of both a Crown Court appeal (on the merits) and a Case Stated appeal (on law). One must elect.
The letter continues:
Mr Geddes subsequently filed a CrimPR compliant notice of appeal on 11 January 2026 – some 6 months beyond the time limit to do so. He asks for an extension of time within which to make that application. I don’t need to decide on the merits or otherwise of that application for the following reason.
At this point, something important is absent: there is no reference to the judicial review refusal, which had expressly indicated that a Crown Court appeal constituted the appropriate alternative remedy. The January appeal was lodged promptly following that refusal.
The letter then records:
On 2 July 2025 he lodged an application that magistrates’ court state a case for the opinion of the High Court.
To emphasise that he had made such an application, on 30 July 2025 he made a demand under s.111(5) MCA 1980 for a certificate of the refusal of the magistrates’ court to state a case.
Again, the chronology is accurately stated. What is not addressed is that the magistrates’ court neither stated a case nor issued a refusal certificate. In practical terms, the statutory mechanism did not move. The Case Stated route therefore stalled without a decision capable of being challenged.
The refusal letter then turns to section 111(4):
By s.111(4), on the making of an application under s.111 MCA 1980 any right to appeal to the Crown Court ceased.
Mr Geddes chose to pursue an appeal by way of case stated. He no longer has a right to appeal to the Crown Court under s.108 MCA 1980.
That being so, there is no right to an extension of time and I refuse to extend time.
On a literal reading of section 111(4), this reasoning is orthodox: once a Case Stated application is made, the right to a Crown Court appeal is displaced.
However, that provision presupposes a functioning statutory pathway — one in which the Case Stated application is either transmitted to the High Court or formally refused. It does not expressly address the scenario in which the lower court neither processes the application nor issues a refusal certificate, thereby preventing access to both routes.
The practical consequence of the reasoning adopted here is that:
I am treated as having elected the Case Stated route;
the Case Stated route did not progress;
and I am therefore said to have no remaining right to pursue a Crown Court appeal.
In other words, the combination of administrative inaction below and strict statutory interpretation above results in the extinguishment of both avenues of review.
It is difficult to see how Parliament can have intended that the exercise of one statutory right — followed by procedural paralysis — should leave a defendant with no route of appeal at all.
The Crown Court refusal implies that my only remaining remedy is mandamus for Case Stated. But that is more cost, energy, and risk — when none of it should be necessary. A statutory appeal route that only functions if you sue the court to make it operate is not a remedy. It is a trap.
Process without escape
By now, the outline of the situation may be apparent.
I invoke the Case Stated route. Nothing happens.
I seek judicial review to address the consequences of that non-progression. Permission is refused, on the basis that I should pursue a Crown Court appeal.
I then pursue a Crown Court appeal — even though it is not the natural forum for the underlying constitutional and jurisdictional issues. It is refused because I invoked Case Stated.
The result is a procedural cul-de-sac. This is not a complaint about losing. It is a complaint about remedies cancelling each other out.
This is precisely the kind of dead-end maze that safeguards such as Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights are intended to prevent. A “tribunal established by law” is not merely an officially sanctioned name or administrative label. It encompasses the availability of lawful supervision and review. If every route to review is rendered inoperative — whether by strict statutory sequencing, administrative inaction, or procedural formalism — then the substance of that guarantee is in question.
All the pieces — except law
My case is an edge-condition stress test. If I were to summarise the position bluntly, it would read like a “full house”:
No originating cause of action or clearly articulated factual accusation.
No evidence said to establish personal wrongdoing; the disclosed material, in my view, points the other way.
No single prosecuting authority has, on the record, assumed clear responsibility for the prosecution’s initiation and continuity.
No unambiguous identification of the court as a tribunal established in law.
No substantive response to pre-trial jurisdictional challenges.
No determination (or even refusal) of a pre-trial judicial review application, despite correspondence indicating that appellate remedies should be pursued.
No processing of the Case Stated application.
No engagement, in the Crown Court refusal, with the full procedural chronology as set out in my application.
No relief via the Crown Court appeal, despite having been directed to pursue that route.
Continuing enforcement pressure while supervisory routes remain unresolved.
Each item individually might be explained away. Taken together, they present something more troubling: a conviction that appears insulated from effective review.
Parliament cannot have intended that the election of one statutory remedy — followed by procedural paralysis — should extinguish all others. Nor can it have intended that enforcement should outrun adjudication where the legal identity of the adjudicating tribunal is itself in dispute.
When procedural pathways become mutually cancelling, what remains is not robust justice, but the appearance of process without its substance.
Pick your tribunal
Given this situation, what next?
In criminal justice, what matters is not what officials ‘meant’, but what legal authority was exercised, by what tribunal, and under what act. The problem is not simply delay or disagreement. It is instability of attribution.
To grasp the gravity of the problem, consider that the conviction in my case is treated — depending on which document you read — as having been issued by:
A named magistrates’ court tied to administrative code 1752
A regional composite court combining North & West Cumbria with Carlisle
A venue treated as the tribunal (Carlisle Magistrates’ Court as location-as-court)
A Local Justice Area presented as if it were the court
A regional “North Cumbria” magistrates’ court formulation
“The Justices” at Carlisle treated as the tribunal itself
Magistrates identified by region rather than by court
A single justice acting under the Single Justice Procedure
A Single Justice Procedure processing centre
An HMCTS case-management identity functioning as the court
A regional administrative unit standing in for judicial authority
Delegated authority under secondary instruments described as constituting the court
A generic “Magistrates’ Court” formulation without fixed legal identity
These are not spelling variations.
They are different categories of claimed authority:
court
region
venue
administrative boundary
judicial persona
code
national processing mechanism
system abstraction
A criminal conviction must be attributable to a tribunal established by law — a stable, identifiable legal entity exercising judicial power.
What appears here is not stability, but substitution. That multiplicity is not a minor defect. It is a crack in the bedrock of the rule of law, because coercive power cannot be lawfully exercised by a shifting set of administrative descriptions.
In criminal justice, attribution matters: you must be able to identify the tribunal, the jurisdiction, and the judicial act.
The High Court’s test
My judicial review renewal hearing on 5 March has two most likely outcomes.
Permission is granted on a limited basis, because the refusal decision proceeded on an incomplete or inaccurate procedural history concerning Case Stated and the availability of alternative remedies. Interim relief may follow, with enforcement stayed until the lawful sequencing of adjudication and supervision is restored.
Permission is refused, but with clear directions indicating that the correct next step is to pursue mandamus to compel the magistrates’ court to process the Case Stated application (either by transmitting it or refusing it formally).
Both outcomes are defensible in law. What is not defensible is a situation in which every statutory route is treated as extinguished, while enforcement continues as if nothing is amiss. The High Court exists to prevent precisely this kind of foreclosure of supervision and review.
The cost of pressing these issues is high — personally, financially, and psychologically. But convictions without lawful attribution, and enforcement without effective review, are not a technicality. They are the point at which legality becomes performance rather than protection.