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A free weekly collection of criminal law links - for practitioners, law students, and anyone with an interest in the criminal justice system of England and Wales.
Curated by Sam Willis, a barrister at 5 King's Bench Walk.
News
'Pedestrian Auriol Grey has Huntingdon cyclist death conviction overturned'
A woman who shouted and waved at a cyclist, causing her to fall into the path of a car, has had her manslaughter conviction overturned by appeal judges. Auriol Grey, 50, of Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, used an expletive as she told Celia Ward, 77, to "get off the pavement" in the town in 2020. Mrs Ward, from nearby Wyton, died from her injuries. Ms Grey, who has cerebral palsy and partial blindness, was jailed for three years at a retrial last year.
At the Court of Appeal on Wednesday, three judges overturned her conviction, leading her family to call for "lessons to be learnt", saying that vulnerable people needed better support from the justice system. Dame Victoria Sharp, sitting with Mrs Justice Yip and Mrs Justice Farbey, said: "In our judgment, the prosecution case was insufficient even to be left to the jury. In all the circumstances, we have no hesitation in concluding that the appellant's conviction for manslaughter is unsafe."
'Majority verdicts facilitated 56 miscarriages of justice in England and Wales, charity says'
At least 56 miscarriages of justice have occurred in cases in England and Wales where the jury was split, according to a charity, which says jury unanimity should be reintroduced to safeguard against wrongful criminal convictions. The research by Appeal, the miscarriage of justice charity, says majority verdicts “arguably dilute the principle of reasonable doubt” and have facilitated miscarriages in cases including those of Andrew Malkinson, who spent 17 years in prison for a rape he did not commit; Barry George, who was wrongly convicted over the death of Jill Dando; and Winston Trew, one of the Oval Four...
Nisha Waller, a co-author of the report, said: “Had the jury unanimity requirement not been scrapped in 1967, Appeal client Andy Malkinson might have been spared more than 17 years of imprisonment. Two of Andy’s jurors were not convinced he was guilty, but their doubts were dismissed. The courts and the CCRC [Criminal Cases Review Commission] need to tally up how many overturned convictions and cases under their review involved jurors voting ‘not guilty’ so we can examine the impact on miscarriages of justice.” Majority verdicts, which allow up to two jurors out of 12 to dissent, or one where there are 10 or 11 jurors, account for about 15% of crown court convictions each year, according to the report. By contrast, in the US a landmark 2020 case, Ramos v Louisiana, outlawed majority verdicts for serious crimes. (At the time they were only allowed in Louisiana and Oregon.)
'Pioneering free therapy pilot to support jurors'
Jurors who have experienced mental and emotional strain following difficult cases, such as the Lucy Letby trial, will be entitled to free counselling sessions as part of plans announced today (8 May 2024). Many people find their experience of jury service to be fulfilling and are supported throughout by full-time court staff. But for those who do experience upset, further help is currently limited to signposting to a GP or the Samaritans – this can leave some to feel isolated following their civic duty. The new pilot would provide specialist expert support for jurors offering 6 free counselling sessions - alongside a 24/7 telephone helpline for round-the-clock triage support, advice and information.
The justice system depends on the public joining a jury when they are called, and today’s news will provide further reassurance that those who hear distressing evidence of murder, abuse and cruelty will get the support they need, when they need it. The programme will be piloted in 15 courts across England and Wales from Summer 2024...
Cases
R v Katie Ng & Anor [2024] EWCA Crim 493
Judges sitting in the criminal courts deal on a daily basis with challenges arising out of under-resourcing of the criminal justice system. In this case, the judge had to deal with non-attendance of prosecuting trial counsel. His response was to stay the proceedings as an abuse of the process of the court (the Terminating Ruling)...
In our judgment, there was no prosecutorial conduct in this case that could justify a stay. In any event, there was a failure to carry out the necessary balancing exercise. Rather, the judge’s approach was to focus on the Respondents and to punish the CPS in the hope that lessons would be learned and the situation improved. What he should have done is to balance the public interest in ensuring that those charged with crimes should be tried against the competing public interest in maintaining confidence in the criminal justice system and not giving the impression that the end will always be treated as justifying any means. In summary, there was no proper justification for the exceptional step of a stay for abuse of process being imposed in the circumstances and the judge was wrong to proceed otherwise...
There is, in our judgment, a route by which a judge can terminate proceedings in which the prosecution are not represented at trial by an advocate. This is unlikely to constitute an abuse of process as we have said. However, such a situation will usually involve some form of application for an adjournment so that the prosecution can be represented at a new trial date. Even if no-one has managed to articulate any such application, the simple absence of an advocate will require the court to consider whether to adjourn the trial... In our judgment, where the prosecution requires an adjournment because it cannot prosecute the case unless one is granted, there is an implied proposal to offer no evidence if that adjournment is refused. Often that consequence will be acknowledged explicitly in order to underline the importance of the application, but it will always be there by implication...
When refusing an adjournment in circumstances where that will be terminating ruling, the court must take steps to ensure that the prosecution is able to consider an appeal to this court. Necessarily, there will be no trial advocate present in cases of this kind, and fairness requires that the refusal is communicated to the prosecution in such a way that it can either give notice of its intention to appeal immediately after the ruling, or to seek an adjournment to allow it to consider doing so as required by CrimPR 38.2. If the prosecution, having had a fair opportunity to do so, does not give notice of its intention to appeal accompanied by the acquittal undertaking, that will be the moment at which the court should enter not guilty verdicts under s.17. That power will be validly exercised whether or not the prosecution explicitly “proposes to offer no evidence” (to echo the words of s.17)...
R v Auriol Grey [2024] EWCA Crim 487
... The appellant was in due course charged with manslaughter. The charge was pursued as unlawful act manslaughter. The prosecution case was that the hostile reaction of the appellant to Mrs Ward cycling on the pavement was unlawful. It had caused Mrs Ward to fall off her bike and into the carriageway, resulting in her death. The words “Get off the fucking pavement” characterised the appellant’s mindset of hostility to cyclists riding on pavements. There was ample space for both the appellant and Mrs Ward to pass one another but the appellant had deliberately obstructed Mrs Ward’s path, waving her arm in such a manner that it either briefly made contact with Mrs Ward or caused her to take evasive action, leading to her falling into the road to her death...
It is common ground that the appellant could only be convicted of manslaughter if she had committed the offence of common assault, this being the only possible base offence. It is also common ground that the elements of the base offence were never specified at trial, whether by the prosecution or by the judge, nor was the failure to do so recognised by those then representing the appellant. This was not simply a failure to provide a label for a base offence about which the jury were otherwise properly directed. The jury were provided with no directions at all about any of the elements of the base offence, whether relating to the actus reus or the mens rea. They were simply not asked to consider the factual elements required to prove a common assault. This amounted to a failure to direct the jury about an essential ingredient of the offence of manslaughter...
The prosecution appear to have approached this case on the basis that hostility on the part of the appellant was enough to establish that her actions were unlawful. The legal directions did nothing to correct that misunderstanding. There was no focus on the appellant’s subjective state of mind. There was no identification of what the appellant needed to have appreciated in order to establish recklessness. No attention was given to whether she recognised that there was a risk of Mrs Ward apprehending that she would be violent towards her. The jury were not asked to determine what circumstances were known to the appellant or to decide whether she ran an unreasonable risk in those circumstances. The mental element of common assault was simply not addressed at all...
Other
'Huyton Firm: Brutal organised crime group brought down by its own text messages'
More than 30 serious criminals have been jailed after police cracked their encrypted text messages and uncovered a violent feud over stolen drugs. Crime bosses in the Huyton Firm had planned to murder the men they thought had taken more than £1m of cocaine from them. After a successful challenge in court, BBC Panorama obtained 10,000 of the firm's messages. They reveal plans for brutal violence, including a hand-grenade attack. The Huyton Firm - named after the part of Merseyside where it is based - has been run for 30 years by two secretive brothers. Following the conclusion of a series of trials at Manchester Crown Court, they can now be identified as Vincent and Francis Coggins. The brothers and others in the firm spoke freely on the EncroChat messaging system, believing their encrypted conversations were completely secure...