Criminal ; ;Imprisonment defendant on bail during trial on condition that he be held in custody each day before and after hearing hearing days not deductible from sentence ;Burgess v Home Office: CA (Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers MR, May and Laws LJJ): 6 November 2000 ;The claimant was granted bail while awaiting trial on a rape charge.

The trial judge continued his bail during the trial on condition that he surrender to custody an hour before the hearing and remain in custody until 30 minutes after the court rose each day.

The claimant was convicted and sentenced to eight years imprisonment.

After his release he brought an action for false imprisonment against the Home Office, claiming aggravated damages for the last five days of his sentence on the ground that during the five days of the trial he had been in custody before and after the hearing within s.67 of the Criminal Justice Act 1967 as amended and therefore five full days should have been deducted from his sentence.

The Home Offices application for summary judgment was refused.

The Home Office appealed.

;Sean Wilken (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) for the Home Office.

Edward Fitzgerald QC and Jonathan Hall (instructed by Clarke Kiernan, Tonbridge) for the claimant.

;Held, allowing the appeal and granting summary judgment to the Home Office, that once a defendant had surrendered to the custody of the court for his trial his further detention lay solely in the discretion and power of the judge; that the period spent in the dock during his trial was not deductible from a defendants sentence; that periods spent in custody before and after the hearing for the orderly and efficient conduct of the trial similarly fell outside s.67 of the 1967 Act; and that, accordingly, the action was bound to fail.