Weekly Digest: 13 May 2019

The appellant had stabbed the deceased in the early hours of the morning after they had both been at a party in Leicester, in a short altercation that took place after the deceased got out of a taxi. The prosecution case was that the appellant had stabbed the deceased in anger; the appellant pleaded self-defence, with no intent to cause any harm. The sole issue for the jury was whether they were sure that the appellant had intended to kill or cause the deceased really serious bodily harm.

Counsel for the appellant had submitted at trial that it was open to the jury to find him guilty of involuntary manslaughter. While the Judge did not produce a final ruling on the matter he did give substantial directions to the jury, including asking: “What if you conclude that when he stabbed, if that is what you do conclude, he did not intend to kill or cause really serious injury but intended to cause some harm, harm falling short of grievous bodily harm? If that was your conclusion then your verdict would be not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter.” On appeal, the appellant submitted that unlawful act manslaughter should have been left to the jury on a different basis, namely that the jury may have decided that the appellant did not honestly believe he was about to be attacked, had produced the knife unlawfully, had not deliberately stabbed the deceased, but also have concluded that the deceased moved towards and impaled himself on the appellant’s knife.

The appellate court was not persuaded that the Judge was in error in not leaving to the jury the alternative version of manslaughter. First, it was remote from the real issue at trial, namely the stark dispute between the prosecution and defence case as to whether the appellant deliberately stabbed the deceased. Secondly, it required the jury rejecting both self-defence and the appellant deliberately stabbing the deceased in favour of the finely tuned possibility that the appellant had done enough with the knife for the deceased to die, but not enough to amount to a deliberate stabbing. This was artificial. Thirdly, a version of manslaughter was correctly left to the jury relating to the appellant’s intent when stabbing the deceased.

Further, at the end of day one of the Judge’s summing up one of the jurors asked if they would be able to leave the building by a separate exit so that they did not encounter people who had been in the public gallery at trial. The Judge regarded this as a jury management issue, answered it through the court staff, and did not inform counsel until after the end of the trial. The appellant submitted that this message disclosed a jury irregularity. The appellate court agreed; to not bring the jury back into court to deliver the answer to the question offended the principle of open justice. The Judge should have asked the message to be reduced to writing, to help uncover any concerns, before notifying counsel and answering it in open court. However, this irregularity had no impact upon the safety of any conviction. The appeal was dismissed.

In January 2013 the applicant, then aged 26, drove from Coventry to Manchester and attacked a complete stranger as he walked down the street. He stabbed the stranger five times with a knife, killing him, before getting back in his car and driving back to Coventry. He was seen by passers-by to be smiling and laughing immediately after the killing. He was arrested on suspicion four days afterwards in Coventry. It transpired that two weeks before the killing in Manchester the applicant had also driven from Coventry to Nottingham and punched another stranger in the face, in what the prosecution said was a dry run for the killing.

In the days immediately after his arrest he was assessed multiple times by medical professionals, none of whom found any symptoms of psychiatric illnesses. However, his solicitor soon expressed concerns that he might have difficulty understanding the process, and in later interviews the applicant began to talk about hearing voices in his head that had told him to go to Nottingham and Manchester. At a pre-trial hearing the two medical experts called both agreed that he was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia at the time of the killing. At trial the prosecution relied on the applicant’s pre-planning, attempts at alibi, attempts to hide evidence, and the earlier medical reports to disprove this diagnosis. They argued that the doctors had been duped. The jury convicted the applicant of murder. The applicant now applied for permission to appeal, along with the necessary extension of time of nearly five years.

As this was not a change of law case, where the law had changed between the initial trial and the subsequent appeal, the usual test applied, namely whether the merits of the case were so compelling as to justify an extension of time to prevent a miscarriage of justice. The applicant advanced two grounds on these merits. First, that there was no proper evidential basis on which the jury could reject the unanimous expert psychiatric evidence. Seven consultants had tested him by the time of the trial and none found that he was faking his symptoms. Exceptionally, the trial judge should have withdrawn the case from the jury at the close of evidence. The court rejected these submissions. Material was available that potentially undermined the experts’ opinions, a very experienced defence counsel did not make a submission of no case to answer, and the judge was entitled to leave the matter to the jury to determine on that evidence.

Secondly, the applicant argued that, in the light of the subsequent decision of Lord Hughes in R v Golds [2016] UKSC 61, the trial judge’s directions were inadequate and effectively invited the jury to act as amateur psychiatrists. The appellate court rejected this. The judge’s summing up could not have been fairer to the defence. Leave to appeal and the extension of time application were refused.

On 31^st May the applicant, now 32 years old, pleaded guilty to offences contrary to the Terrorism Act 2006, namely preparing to commit terrorist acts through seeking to join ISIS, assisting another in preparing to commit such acts by sending terrorist material and inspiring other terrorists, and encouraging members of the public to commit terrorist acts. The applicant had used a number of online Telegram channels and other social media groups to post an enormous quantity of terrorist-related materials, including some 290,000 messages over the course of a single year, glorifying terrorist atrocities and encouraging readers to commit their own attacks. He created his own “Lone Mujahid” channel to provide resources to lone wolf attackers, including bomb-making instructions, and sought to travel overseas himself to Syria. He initially pleaded not guilty and only changed his plea at trial after a detailed opening speech by prosecution counsel.

A pre-sentence report assessed the applicant as posing a high likelihood of further offending of a similar nature and a high risk of serious harm to others. However, an Imam described the applicant as a socially excluded and isolated individual who was a self-radicalised, and who might be easily re-educated and enabled to become a fully integrated member of society. The judge found the applicant to be a dangerous offender under the CJA 2003 and imposed life imprisonment for the offences of preparing to commit terrorist acts with a minimum term of 25 years and a determinate sentence of four and a half years for the offence of encouraging member of the public to commit terrorist acts, taking into account a 10% discount for the late guilty pleas. The applicant sought leave to appeal against these sentences on the grounds that the judge was wrong to find the applicant dangerous, and that both the sentences and the minimum terms were manifestly excessive.

The appellate court could find no flaw in the trial judge’s reasoning that the applicant was dangerous. The reports finding that the applicant could benefit from a programme of de-radicalisation did not challenge this. The appellate court did however find that the trial judge had fallen into error in some aspects of his application of the sentencing guidelines. While he was correct to impose life sentences for the offences, the applicant’s planning had not reached the stage where multiple deaths were very likely to be caused, and so while the culpability B assessment was correct the appropriate harm category was 2, not 1. Similarly the judge was not correct to find that the applicant had coordinated others to take part in terrorist activities. The trial judge was also incorrect to give the applicant the full 10% guilty plea discount when he had changed his plea after the beginning of the trial; a 5% reduction was all that could be warranted. Leave to appeal was granted, and the appeal allowed to the limited extent that the life sentences, and the four and a half year determinate sentence, were upheld but the minimum term substituted with a minimum term of 19 years.

The Inns of Court College of Advocacy (ICCA), a training college set-up by the Inns, has applied to deliver a new ‘lower cost’ course for would-be barristers.

On similar lines to the forthcoming Solicitors Qualification Examination (SQE), the new BPTC exam would be in two parts. If approved, the course will run from next year and would cost around £13,000.

The full piece can be found here.

Ministers are under pressure to raise the age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales after the Scottish parliament voted in favour of a new higher age of 12.

The Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has urged reform across the UK after the UN’s committee on the rights of the child (UNCRC) decided the global minimum at which a child can be prosecuted should be 14.

More details can be found here.

Lucy Fraser QC MP replaces him as solicitor general.

More details can be found here.

The deaths put pressure on the Home Office to justify its resumption of deportation charter flights.

The full story can be found here.