ThepProsecution relied entirely upon the evidence of an accomplice, Solomon. Lester and Harvey were convicted. A third man was acquitted. The Court referred to how the trial judge left the case to the jury and quoted from the summing up: ‘Members of the jury, in considering the evidence and in coming to your decision, as a matter of common sense and justice you will no doubt see why you have to deal with each of these defendants separately. Your duty is to consider the case of each defendant separately. The evidence is not the same in the case of all of them and they are entitled to separate consideration by you. It may be, and I will have a lot to say about Solomon, that if you are not satisfied about Solomon in the case of one of these defendants that you will think it not right to be satisfied about him in respect of any one of the others. It may be unreal to think that you could believe him in respect of one defendant and not in respect of the others, but that is something that you and you alone can decide, having heard the evidence and applying my direction in law to it.’ The Court concluded: ‘We take the view that the learned judge had formed in his own mind the proposition that it really was the case you either convict all on Solomon’s evidence or you convict none. The judge having formed that view the submissions which learned counsel have made on behalf of the Appellants, and to which we have referred, are of the highest importance. It seems to us, when you come to consider Solomon, that you cannot as it were compartmentalise his evidence. The jury were saying ‘We cannot believe him for sure whether he is telling the truth about Willis’, and in saying that it must necessarily follow that they could not, in our view, accept for certainty that he was telling the truth in the case of the others. The fact that all the evidence about Willis’s alibi caused them to pause and have doubt about Willis and therefore acquit him, cannot make Solomon’s evidence in other respects acceptable so that they could convict the two appellants. In those circumstances we have reached the view that these verdicts are not safe and are not satisfactory. And the convictions must be quashed.’
Judges:
Lord Lane, Chief Justice
Citations:
Unreported, 13 December 1982
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Raymond Christopher Betts, John Anthony Hall v Regina CACD 9-Feb-2001
The defendants appealed convictions for causing grievous bodily harm. During interviw, the solicitor had advised that since the police had failed to make proper disclosure of the evidence, his client should not answer. He now appealed complaining of . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Criminal Practice
Updated: 23 March 2022; Ref: scu.185681