Mercy for Huddersfield man who used dead wife’s name to evade speeding tickets

Christopher Bingley, 44, was caught speeding four times between August 2010 and April last year.

Because he was driving his dead wife’s car, speeding tickets were issued in her name and Bingley knowingly paid off the fines in her name, Bradford Crown Court heard.

When the fourth offence triggered a court appearance for his wife, Bingley took police advice and attended with a coroner’s letter to prove his wife’s death.

Joanne Bingley killed herself in April 2010 - around four months before the first speeding offence. She had been suffering from severe post-natal depression and committed suicide 10 weeks after the birth of their first child, Emily.

After Bingley’s court appearance, police inquiries began and he was shown on CCTV speeding in his wife’s car on all four occasions.

Bingley previously pleaded guilty to three counts of perverting the course of justice.

Judge Peter Benson sentenced Bingley to six months in prison, suspended for two years.

He was banned from driving for nine months and given a four-month curfew, which means he must stay at his home address at Allison Drive, Huddersfield, between the hours of 7pm and 6am.

The judge said: “On three separate occasions when you yourself had been speeding in a vehicle registered in your deceased wife’s name you filled in every form purporting to be for her admitting she was the driver and sadly it had been months before the offences when she had passed away.

“It is said by various people that you were so distraught by her death that you were acting in a state of confusion.

“I am sorry but I do not accept that.

“Each of these acts involved you forging details and that was a deliberate course to take.

“I do not accept that it was out of confusion.”

Judge Benson said after hearing about Bingley’s past convictions he only had one choice - to jail him.

Bingley committed two offences of driving while disqualified, one of which resulted in a short jail term in 2000, and one offence of driving without insurance in 1999.

The judge said the only reason he suspended the jail term was so that Bingley could look after his two-year-old daughter.

The judge said of suspending Bingley’s sentence: “I think your advocate’s point about the impact on your daughter, given the loss of her mother when she was only a few months old, weighs heavily on the court.

“I have grave reservations about whether I am taking the right course of action in doing what I am doing.”

In court, Bingley thanked the judge for allowing him to continue to look after his daughter.

He said: “I do accept what you have handed down today and thank you for taking into consideration my daughter.”

Earlier in mitigation, defence lawyer Claire Moran said since his wife’s death Bingley has set up a charity which he has resigned from, suffered severe health problems and is now bankrupt and facing eviction from his home.

Ms Moran said: “Effectively over the last two years Mr Bingley has had his whole world destroyed.”

Bingley set up the Joanne (Joe) Bingley Memorial Foundation after his wife’s death to inform people about the dangers of post-natal depression. He resigned from his position as founder and spokesman earlier this month.

Ms Moran said her client suffers from deep vein thrombosis, a hernia and neutropenia.

She said in the past the university-educated Bingley had a good job and was successful in the finance sector.

The judge recognised and commended Bingley’s charity work.