Bethel v The State
| Jurisdiction | UK Non-devolved |
| Judge | Lord Hoffmann |
| Judgment Date | 10 December 1998 |
| Court | Privy Council |
| Date | 10 December 1998 |
Lord Hoffman
Lord Clyde
Lord Hutton
Privy Council
Practice and Procedure - Appeal against conviction for murder and sentence of death — Application for special leave to appeal to the Privy Council — Privy Council held that there was nothing that called for further inquiry — Petition dismissed.
JUDGMENT of THE COURT DELIVERED BYOn 22nd October 1998 their Lordships granted the petitioner, Christopher Bethel, special leave to appeal against the decision of the Trinidad and Tobago Court of Appeal dismissing his appeal from a conviction for murder before Lucky J. and a jury on 23rd January 1996, when he was sentenced to death. Their Lordships treated the hearing of the petition as the hearing of the appeal and remitted the case to the Court of Appeal to consider the matters in the petition, hear such evidence as it thought fit and to decide whether the conviction should be affirmed or set aside and, in the latter case, whether a retrial should be ordered. It is not their Lordships' practice to give reasons for either allowing or dismissing a petition for special leave to appeal but in view of the unusual nature of the present case they think it would be appropriate to do so.
The petition upon which their Lordships granted special leave was the second which the petitioner had submitted, the first having been dismissed on 4th December 1997. There is no procedural bar to the second petition and this is not the first occasion upon which leave has been granted upon such a petition, but their Lordships would normally entertain a second petition based upon matters which could have been raised in the first. It is therefore necessary to explain why this was regarded as an exceptional case.
The case against the petitioner at the trial was undoubtedly a strong one. On his own admission in a statement to the police which the jury must have accepted, he and his co-accused had gone with a cutlass and a gun to rob the deceased, who had been the co-accused(s employer. They ransacked the deceased's house, stole various items of electrical goods, bundled the deceased into the back of his van and drove him 40 miles to a place where he met his death by being strangled and drowned head down in a barrel of water. Afterwards the petitioner sold some of the stolen goods. Each accused, in statement to the police, denied being involved in the murder and blamed the other. The jury must have found there had been a common purpose to kill or cause grievous bodily harm and convicted them both.
The appeal to the Court of Appeal was based upon complaints of misdirection by the trial judge. These were rejected and the first petition to their Lordships for special leave, which alleged similar matters, was dismissed. No more need therefore be said about the merits of the conviction on the evidence before the jury.
The second petition is based upon alleged misconduct by the petitioner's counsel at the trial. In an affidavit dated 21 st May 1998 the petitioner said that before his trial he was notified by the Legal Aid Board that Mr. Ian Brooks, counsel of 3 or 4 years call, had been appointed to represent him. He wrote twice to Mr. Brooks asking for a meeting but received no reply. The “very first occasion” that he saw Mr. Brooks was in court on the first day of the trial, when the latter introduced himself to the judge. Despite the fact that he had been in a cell under the court from 8.00 a.m. until the time when proceedings commenced at 9.00 a.m., Mr. Brooks had not been to see him. The first occasion Mr. Brooks saw him outside court was for ten minutes on the third or fourth day in a meeting room under the court. He asked the petitioner whether he was guilty and the petitioner said that he was not. He then asked him to write his defence on a piece of paper. On the following day the petitioner gave him the piece of paper (the contents of which are not specified in the affidavit) and Mr. Brooks said that he would not run such a defence. When the petitioner protested he “got extremely uptight”...
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...guilty as unsafe. Their Lordships feel obliged, however, to issue a reminder of the remarks made by the Board in Bethel v. The State (1998) 55 W.I.R. 394 that ordinarily they will not even entertain a ground of appeal based upon allegations of incompetence by counsel when raised for the fir......
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Romeo Cannonier Appellant v DPP Respondent [ECSC]
...of guilty as unsafe. Their Lordships feel obliged, however, to issue a reminder of the remarks made by the Board in Bethel v The State (1998) 55 WIR 394 that ordinarily they will not even entertain a ground of appeal based upon allegations of incompetence by counsel when raised for the firs......
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Romeo Cannonier Appellant v DPP Respondent [ECSC]
...of guilty as unsafe. Their Lordships feel obliged, however, to issue a reminder of the remarks made by the Board in Bethel v The State (1998) 55 WIR 394 that ordinarily they will not even entertain a ground of appeal based upon allegations of incompetence by counsel when raised for the firs......