Criminal

Confiscation order - Crown Court rejecting third party's assertion of ownership of property and making order - third party entitled to seek exclusion of contested property in High Court enforcement proceedingsIn re Norris: HL (Lord Hope of Craighead, Lord Browne-Wilkinson, Lord Clyde, Lord Hutton and Lord Hobhouse of Woodborough): 28 June 2001The husband was convicted of drug trafficking offences.

Before sentence the Customs & Excise Commissioners applied for a confiscation order, making it necessary to assess his realisable property.

The wife gave evidence on his behalf that the matrimonial home belonged either wholly or substantially to her.The judge disbelieved her evidence and made the confiscation order on the basis that the house formed part of the husband's realisable property.

On the customs' application to the High Court under section 11 of the Drug Trafficking Offences Act 1986 to enforce the order, the judge appointed a receiver.

The wife applied to vary the order so as to exclude the house from the list of realisable assets and sought to adduce evidence before him.The judge dismissed the application.

The Court of Appeal [2000] Gazette, 9 February; [2000] 1 WLR 1094 upheld that decision on the ground that it would be an abuse of the process for the court to allow a third party to relitigate issues which had been already decided in the Crown Court on substantially the same evidence.

The wife appealed.Andrew Nicol QC and Simon Cheetham (instructed by Saunders & Co, London) for the wife.

Andrew Mitchell QC and Kennedy Talbot (instructed by Solicitor, Customs & Excise) for the commissioners.Held, allowing the appeal, that the scheme of the 1986 Act was that the Crown Court was to assess the value of the convicted person's proceeds of drug trafficking and the amount of his realisable property for the purpose of making the necessary confiscation order in the criminal proceedings, whereas the subsequent enforcement of that order by way of empowering a receiver to take possession of the realisable property was a matter for the High Court as part of its civil jurisdiction which allowed any assertion of interest in the property by a third party before its disposal; and that, accordingly, since it was the intention of the Act that such third party interests be resolved in the High Court, the wife was not precluded from asserting her interest before the High Court by reason of having previously made assertions as to the ownership of the property when called as a witness in the Crown Court to support the defendant's case that the property was not his.

(WLR)