Contempt

Committal to prison for contempt - order suspending sentence indefinitely - order validGriffin v Griffin: CA (Simon Brown and Hale LJJ): 7 April 2000

Having breached two earliernon-molestation orders, the husband was committed to prison for two months for contempt, but the judge suspended the order if and for so long as the husband complied with a further non-molestation order made on the same date, which was expressed to last until further order.Following breaches of the latter order, an assistant recorder activated the two-month suspended sentence and committed the husband to a further four months' imprisonment.On his appeal, the husband challenged the validity of the judge's order, the effect of which was to suspend the two-month sentence indefinitely.Cheryl Jones (instructed by Debo & Co, Finsbury Park) for the husband.

Delphine Breese-Laughran (instructed by David Levene & Co) for the wife.Held, dismissing the appeal, that the common law power to commit to prison for contempt of court was to be distinguished from the statutory power, introduced by s.39 of the Criminal Justice Act 1967, to suspend a sentence of imprisonment in a criminal case; that the generally accepted view that an offender should not have a suspended sentence hanging over him indefinitely applied less powerfully in the case of committals for contempt, to which s.39 of the 1967 Act did not apply; that the dicta in Pidduck v Molloy [1992] 2 FLR 202, 205 that 'a sentence of imprisonment has to be suspended for a finite period' should be understood as an indication of how the court should exercise its discretion and not as ruling that an order of indefinite duration must be invalid; and that, in the circumstances, the assistant recorder had rightly held that the husband had suffered no injustice.

(WLR)