Asiedu v Regina: CACD 30 Apr 2015

Renewed application for leave to appeal against his conviction for conspiracy to cause explosions likely to endanger life or to cause serious injury to property.
Lord Hughes referred to the general rule that, once a defendant has admitted facts which constitute the offence charged by an unambiguous and deliberately intended plea of guilty, there cannot then be an appeal against his conviction: ‘for the simple reason that there is nothing unsafe about a conviction based on the defendant’s own voluntary confession in open court. A defendant will not normally be permitted in this court to say that he has changed his mind and now wishes to deny what he has previously thus admitted in the Crown Court.’
He continued, saying that it does not follow that a plea of guilty is always a bar to the quashing of a conviction. Leaving aside equivocal or unintended pleas, he identified two principal cases in which it is not. First: ‘where the plea of guilty was compelled as a matter of law by an adverse ruling by the trial judge which left no arguable defence to be put before the jury. So, if the judge rules as a matter of law that on the defendant’s own case, that is on agreed or assumed facts, the offence has been committed, there is no arguable defence which the defendant can put before the jury. In that situation he can plead guilty and challenge the adverse ruling by appeal to this court. If the ruling is adjudged to have been wrong, the conviction is likely to be quashed. Contrast the situation where an adverse ruling at the trial (for example as to the admissibility of evidence) renders the defence being advanced more difficult, perhaps dramatically so. There, the ruling does not leave the defendant no case to advance to the jury. He remains able, despite the evidence against him, to advance his defence and, if convicted, to challenge the judicial ruling as to admissibility by way of appeal. If he chooses to plead guilty, he will be admitting the facts which constitute the offence and it will be too late to mount an appeal to this court.’

Hughes L, Wilkie, Irwin JJ
[2015] EWCA Crim 714
Bailii
England and Wales
Citing:
CitedRegina v Chalkley, Jeffries CACD 19-Dec-1997
The 1995 Act will not permit the Court of Appeal to allow an appeal where a conviction was safe but there was a substantial procedural unfairness. In order to understand the role of pre-1 January 1996 jurisprudence in applying what is now the . .

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Crime

Updated: 30 December 2021; Ref: scu.546218