his vehicles home from last month's cycle show at Kindley Field was fined $550 and given another year off the road in Magistrates Court yesterday.

Wilfred DeGraff of Channel View Lane, Hamilton Parish pleaded guilty to driving an unlicenced and uninsured motorbike while disqualified.

He said the cycle was taken down on a truck earlier in the day for the show, but he decide to "try and make a run home'' afterwards.

Explaining Degraff was only six months from the end of a three-year driving ban, duty counsel Mr. John Barritt told the court the case was a perfect example of why the Legislature should do away with mandatory sentences.

Regardless of the circumstances, he said, Senior Magistrate the Wor. Will Francis would be forced to suspend DeGraff's licence for a further 12 months.

Mr. Barritt added that DeGraff would have applied for a reprieve from the rest of his sentence based on his "clean record'' from the past two years -- if he had known it was possible to do so.

Drivers disqualified for more than one year can apply for such a reprieve if they have served more than half of their term without further incident.