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England and Wales Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) Decisions |
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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) Decisions >> Carey & Ors, R v [2006] EWCA Crim 17 (26 January 2006) URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/2006/17.html Cite as: [2006] EWCA Crim 17 |
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COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM LEEDS CROWN COURT
MR. JUSTICE FIELD
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL |
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B e f o r e :
MR JUSTICE TOMLINSON
and
MR JUSTICE ANDREW-SMITH
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REGINA |
Respondent |
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- and - |
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CAREY, C AND F |
Appellant |
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Michael Harrison QC and M. D Colborne (instructed by Yasmin and Shaid) for Claire Carey
Gareth Evans QC and Stephen Wood (instructed by Messrs Lumb and Mcgill) for C
Paul Watson QC and Simon Myers (instructed by McManus and Seddon) for F
Hearing date : 12th January 2006
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Crown Copyright ©
Lord Justice Dyson : This is the judgment of the court.
"[1] I directed the jury in accordance with my rulings:
(a) that it was enough to establish manslaughter that all sober and reasonable persons would have realised that the actual infliction of violence on Aimee would subject her to some physical harm;
(b) that it was not necessary to prove that the physical harm actually inflicted was a cause, or a substantial cause, of death; and
(c) that it was immaterial that the defendant could not have known or foreseen either that the affray or any physical harm actually inflicted upon Aimee might cause her to suffer a fatal ventricular fibrillation.
[2] I did not direct the jury that it was necessary for them to be sure that the individual acts or threats of violence of the defendant, constituting her part in the affray, were in themselves a substantial cause of death."
The facts
Submissions of no case to answer
Affray
"(1) A person is guilty of affray if he uses or threatens unlawful violence towards another and his conduct is such as would cause a person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for his personal safety.
(2) Where 2 or more persons use or threaten the unlawful violence, it is the conduct of them taken together that must be considered for the purposes of sub-section (1).
(3) For the purposes of this section a threat cannot be made by the use of words alone.
(4) No person of reasonable firmness need actually be, or be likely to be, present at the scene.
(5) Affray may be committed in private as well as public places."
Section 6(2) provides: "A person is guilty of violent disorder or affray only if he intends to use or threaten violence or is aware that his conduct may be violent or threaten violence."
"3.29 The element of terror distinguishes affray from offences against the person and emphasises that not all acts of violence against the person amount to an affray; it also marks the character of the offence as one against public order. It was for these reasons that we proposed in our Working Paper that this element should be retained in any new offence, a proposal which was approved by most of our commentators. The great majority also approved our proposal to express this element in terms of "putting in fear" rather than "terror", which in our view was unsuitable as a term for legislation;… Any distinction between "putting in fear" and "terror" is, we think, marginal, and we adhere to the view that this terminology is more appropriate for use in new legislation.
3.32 … The essence of the offence which we are recommending is that the defendant uses or threatens violence to the person of another of such a degree that it is capable of having serious repercussions upon the public peace, and as we said in our Working Paper –
"the function of the bystander is really to act as a measure of the requisite degree of violence …"
To this, we would only add that in devising a suitable test for a new offence, care must be taken to ensure that (as Lord Hailsham stressed in the context of affray at common law) [in Taylor, and §3.38 above] the requirement here is a genuine element of the offence which cannot readily be watered down: any such dilution would weaken the status of the offence as one pertaining to public order."
"…. In my judgment, beginning with the blow landed on James by Claire Carey or the treading on Gemma's flip flops whichever was the earlier, what the defendants did on the evidence towards Aimee and her group could properly found a conclusion by the jury properly directed that a person of reasonable firmness present at the scene would fear for his personal safety. The defendants were acting as a group. They had been drinking and would have appeared to be looking for a violent confrontation. They picked on members of the public whom they really did not know and on whom, having followed them menacingly, they inflicted wholly unjustified, vicious physical violence, even if the assaults on the girls were over in about a minute and the violence was such that no significant injuries resulted. Accordingly, I reject Mr. Harrison's second submission."
"The Prosecution must prove that intending to do so, he or she used or threatened, other than by words alone, to use violence towards Aimee and her group of friends and his or her conduct was such as would cause her person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for his or her personal safety.
To the extent that the Prosecution proved [this] in respect of two or more defendants present at the scene, it is the conduct of them taken together that must be considered when deciding whether their conduct would cause a person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for his or her personal safety. No person of reasonable firmness need actually have been, or had been likely to have been present at the scene. You must imagine a hypothetical man or woman of reasonable firmness witnessing such conduct of the defendants that you find to have been violent or to threaten violence towards Aimee and her group.
It is important to appreciate that the person or persons to whom unlawful violence is used or threatened is not the hypothetical person present at the scene. In other words, the hypothetical person present at the scene is someone watching the incident that is not the victim of the violence or threats of violence or standing so close as to be in effect a participant. Thus it does not follow that the fact that Aimee, Shelley Robinson, Gemma Doyle and James Devaney were very frightened by the incident, that the hypothetical person present at the scene would have feared for his or her personal safety. He may, he or she may or may not have had this fear, it is a matter for you. Note too that the test is "would cause" not "could" or "might cause".
Bear in mind the age and number of the attackers, and the victims, and the nature and scale of the violence and threats of violence that you find occurred during the incident from its outset to its conclusion. Ask yourselves if the defendants would have appeared, to the hypothetical person, to have been acting as a group or gang and looking for a violent confrontation.
It is for you to decide when during the incident the defendants began to be violent or to make threats of violence towards Aimee and her group and when the violence and threats of violence ended. However, since for the purposes of the crime of affray, a threat cannot be made by words alone, you may well think that there cannot have been an affray until at the earliest Gemma's flip-flop's were trodden on.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, I have suggested the two defendants who trod on Gemma's flip-flops, those names are not admitted; the people named in my instructions to you are people who do not admit that they trod on the flip-flops, so I want you to strike through with a pencil those names. I will just remind you that Gemma Doyle, when she was asked who it was who trod on her flip-flops identified the girls by reference to a piercing to the lips. One of the girls who trod on the flip-flops was C, it is not clear who the others were, who the other girl was out of the two. Gemma did say that the blonde girl was walking behind the two who were treading on the flip-flops at this point in time. So the evidence is that there were two girls who trod on the flip-flops, one of whom was C.
The Prosecution have throughout based their contention that H was guilty of affray and of manslaughter on the allegation that he kicked Aimee when the three girls were being attacked. If you are not sure that Hkicked Aimee when the three girls were being attacked, you must acquit him on both counts. If you are sure that he kicked Aimee, you should go on to consider in the light of the evidence as a whole and my directions whether he is guilty or not guilty of affray and manslaughter."
Manslaughter
"Where the act which a person is engaged in performing is unlawful, then if at the same time it is a dangerous act, that is an act which is likely to injure another person, and quite inadvertently he causes the death of that other person by that act, then he is guilty of manslaughter."
"…an unlawful act causing death of another cannot, simply because it is an unlawful act, render a manslaughter verdict inevitable. For such a verdict inexorably to follow, the unlawful act must be such as all sober and reasonable people would inevitably recognise must subject the other person to, at least, the risk of some harm resulting there from, albeit not serious harm."
"This test can only be undertaken upon the basis of the knowledge gained by a sober and reasonable man as though he were present at the scene of and watched the unlawful act being performed and who knows that, as in the present case, an unloaded replica gun was in use, but that the victim may have thought it was a loaded gun in working order. In other words, he has the same knowledge as the man attempting to rob and no more. It was never suggested that any of these appellants knew that their victim had a bad heart. They knew nothing about him."
"I move on to Count 1, manslaughter. In respect of each defendant, the Prosecution must prove that, (1) he or she committed an unlawful act; (2) the unlawful act was one which all reasonable and sober people would inevitably realise must have subjected Aimee to the risk of some physical harm; and (3) the unlawful act committed by the defendant cased Aimee's death.
Unlawful Act. The unlawful act relied on by the Prosecution is the crime of affray. Even in respect of the defendant whose case you are considering, you are sure that he or she is guilty of affray, the Prosecution will have proved element one in respect of that defendant. If you acquit a defendant of affray, you must also acquit him or her of manslaughter.
Risk of physical harm. The risk of harm to Aimee which all reasonable and sober people must realise the unlawful act subjected her to, must be a risk of physical harm. If you find any of the defendants guilty of affray, the actual infliction of violence on Aimee and her two friends is bound to be part of the affray and you may well think that all reasonable sober people would realise that that part of the unlawful act must have subjected Aimee to at least the risk of some physical harm in the form of bodily injury.
When Mr. Myerson was addressing you, he contended that Aimee faced a risk of physical harm in the form of shock. I have come to the conclusion that you ought not to deal with the case on the basis that there was risk of shock to Aimee. The evidence in my judgement is not sufficient for you to take the case on that basis. The difference between emotional upset, which is not physical harm, and shock is a grey area and so take shock out of this case and concentrate on the risk of bodily injury to Aimee involved in the affray, if you find was an affray, bearing in mind the violence that was inflicted on Aimee and her two girl companions.
Causation. The Prosecution must prove that the affray was a substantial, that is to say more than an insignificant, cause of Aimee's death, that actually all occurrences have more than one cause. The Prosecution do not have to prove that the affray was the sole or principle cause of death. The blows inflicted on Aimee were not the direct cause of her death as they would have been if she had suffered a direct and fatal brain injury or had bled to death. The Prosecution contend that the affray nonetheless caused Aimee's death because it put Aimee in a very stressful situation that led to an adrenaline rush that stressed her heart to the point that it became overloaded, thereby triggering a ventricular fibulation.
The Prosecution rely on the evidence of Doctor Survana and Professor Milroy. Both of these medical experts said that in their opinion, it was probably the incident that caused the ventricular fibulation. They based this opinion on the history that Aimee had led an active and normal life right up to the incident and what happened during the incident and the closeness in time between the incident and Aimee's collapse. The doctors accepted that it was possible that the incident was not the cause of the ventricular fibulation, and that Aimee died spontaneously on the night of the 7th of June. However, in their opinion as a matter of probability Aimee did not die spontaneously but because she had been the victim of the incident.
You do not have to accept the doctor's opinions. It is entirely a matter for you whether you do so. Doctor Survana also thought that Aimee's 109 metres run over rough grass and up a slope could itself stress the heart, but felt that it was not possible to separate out the contribution the run made to the death or the contribution made by the defendants conduct before the infliction of violence. Professor Miloy agreed that the run was the event most proximate to Aimee's collapse and was therefore most likely to have been the precipitating factor in Aimee's death. However, he remained of the view that it was the incident overall that caused Aimee's death.
If you think that Aimee's run stressed her heart, you should consider whether this means that the run breaks the chain of causation with the result that the affray was not a significant cause of death. When considering this, ask yourselves why it was that Aimee was running away, was it because she was still reasonably in fear of being attacked, or was it because she could see that the incident was over and she just wanted to get home as quickly as possible. If the reason was, or may have been the latter, you may think that the affray did not cause her death, it is a matter for you. If, however, you conclude that Aimee was still reasonably in fear of being attacked, and that running away was a reasonable thing to do, you may think that the affray was a significant cause of death. Again, it is a matter for you. The fact that it is possible that Aimee died spontaneously is something you must take into account, but it does not mean that you cannot be sure that the affray was a significant cause of death. Use your common sense, have regard to the probabilities and the evidence as a whole, and ask yourselves whether you are sure that the affray was more than an insignificant cause of Aimee's death. If you are sure of this, the Prosecution will have proved causation in element 3. If you are not sure you must acquit all the defendants of manslaughter."
Conclusion on the appeal against conviction
Sentence
Carey
F
C