Fraser v HM Advocate
| Jurisdiction | Scotland |
| Judge | LORD HOPE,LORD RODGER,LORD KERR,LORD DYSON,LORD BROWN |
| Judgment Date | 25 May 2011 |
| Neutral Citation | [2011] UKSC 24 |
| Date | 25 May 2011 |
| Court | Supreme Court (Scotland) |
| Docket Number | No 6 |
[2011] UKSC 24
Lord Hope, Deputy President
Lord Rodger
Lord Brown
Lord Kerr
Lord Dyson
Appellant
ME Scott QC
Christopher Shead
Martin Richardson
(Instructed by JP Mowberry Limited)
Respondent
Frank Mulholland QC
Gordon Balfour
(Instructed by the Crown Agent, Crown Office)
LORD HOPE, WITH WHOM LORD RODGER, LORD KERR AND LORD DYSON AGREE
The appellant is Nat Gordon Fraser who went to trial in January 2003 at the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh charged with the murder of his wife Arlene Fraser, who disappeared from her home at 2 Smith Street, New Elgin on 28 April 1998. On 29 January 2003 he was found guilty of her murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, with a punishment part of 25 years. By a note of appeal which was lodged on 18 December 2003 he appealed against his conviction and sentence. He was granted leave to appeal.
The indictment on which the appellant went to trial included an allegation that, after the murder and with intent to defeat the ends of justice, he did
"(iii) on 7 May 1998 at said 2 Smith Street, place a wedding ring, engagement ring and eternity ring belonging to said Arlene Fraser in said house."
Although the Advocate Depute withdrew this charge at the end of the Crown case, he relied on the evidence that the rings had been discovered in the house on 7 May 1998 as a crucial part of the circumstantial evidence against the appellant that he had arranged for his wife to be killed. In his address to the jury he said that the discovery of the rings was a most compelling piece of evidence. He invited the jury to conclude that eight or nine days after Arlene Fraser's death the appellant had removed the rings from her dead body, taken them to the house and placed them in the bathroom to make it look as though she had decided to walk away from the life that she had had there. He described the return of the rings as the cornerstone of the case against the appellant, for which he had provided no explanation. The trial judge directed the jury that, if they reached the view that they were not prepared to hold that it was the appellant who placed the rings in the bathroom on 7 May, it would not be open to them to convict the appellant.
The case was presented on the assumption, for which unchallenged evidence had been led, that the rings were not in the bathroom when Arlene Fraser disappeared. But it came to the notice of Crown Office after the appeal was lodged that, when he was precognosced by a Crown precognition officer on 3 July 2002, PC Neil Lynch had stated that he had visited the house on three occasions during the night of 28 and 29 April 1998 and that on the final visit he was accompanied by WPC Julie Clark. He said that on the night of 28 April and the morning of 29 April he had seen jewellery, including rings, in the house and that before the official search began he had thought he saw bracelets and rings in the bathroom which looked like a wedding ring, an engagement ring or an eternity ring. This information had not been recorded in PC Lynch's notebook and it was not included in any statement provided by him prior to the trial. It was not provided prior to or during the trial to the Advocate Depute, nor was it provided to the appellant's representatives. PC Lynch and WPC Clark had not been precognosced by the defence in the course of their preparations for the trial.
Inquiries were then instigated, in the course of which a further precognition was taken from PC Lynch and WPC Clark was also precognosced. When he was precognosced on 8 February 2006 PC Lynch said that he first attended the house with WPC Clark around 10.30 pm to 11.00 pm on 28 April 1998 and that during this visit he saw jewellery in the bathroom. His recollection was that there were two or three rings there and a chain necklace, or maybe two. The rings were wedding, engagement or eternity type rings. When she was precognosced on 2 March 2006 WPC Clark said that either on the night of 28 April or in the early hours of 29 April she saw jewellery in the bathroom. There were at least two finger rings and a chain, and one of the rings could have been a lady's wedding ring or an eternity ring. This information had not been recorded in her notebook and it was not included in any statement provided by her before the trial.
The information which had been obtained on precognition from PC Lynch and WPC Clark was disclosed to the appellant on 8 March 2006. On 11 March 2006 a statement was issued by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service in which it was said that the Lord Advocate regarded it as a matter of serious concern that this evidence was not made available to the defence before the trial. The Area Procurator Fiscal for Glasgow, Catherine Dyer, and the Deputy Chief Constable of Strathclyde, Richard Gray, were asked to carry out a full investigation. They reported on 30 October 2006. In the course of their investigation they interviewed the Advocate Depute, now the Hon Lord Turnbull. He said that he thought at an early stage of his involvement in the case that the rings were the key piece of evidence, and that the information in PC Lynch's precognition was so inconsistent with his thinking that if it had come to light during the trial it would have had to have been deserted.
In the light of the information disclosed by the Crown the appellant lodged additional grounds of appeal in May 2006. These were followed by revised additional grounds in February 2007, in which it was submitted that there had been a miscarriage of justice because the evidence of PC Lynch and WPC Clark was not heard at the trial and because the Crown had failed to disclose the information that PC Lynch had provided when he was precognosced on 3 July 2002. The appeal was set down for hearing by the Appeal Court (the Lord Justice Clerk (Lord Gill), Lord Osborne and Lord Johnston) in November 2007.
On 13 November 2007, which was the first day of the appeal hearing, the appellant moved the Appeal Court to allow an additional ground of appeal and a devolution minute, which was in similar terms, to be received. In the devolution minute it was stated that the appellant intended to raise a devolution issue on the following grounds:
"i. That the Crown was in possession of information from Police Constable Neil Lynch, regarding the presence of Arlene Fraser's rings in the bathroom at the locus at the time of her disappearance, prior to and at the time of the trial of the minuter.
ii. That said information was material evidence, which in the context of the trial, tended to undermine the Crown case and would have been of material assistance to the proper preparation or presentation of the minuter's defence.
iii. That the Crown was under a duty to disclose to the defence any information which undermined its case.
iv. That, in breach of its duty, the Crown failed to disclose said information to the defence, thereby infringing the minuter's rights under article 6(1) of the Convention.
v. That, irrespective of its duty to disclose said information, the Crown was under a duty to present the case against the minuter on an accurate premise, and in a manner which was consistent with the minuter's right to a fair trial. In making the cornerstone of its case the reappearance of Arlene Fraser's rings on 7 May 1998 and incriminatory inferences to be drawn from that fact in circumstances where it knew or ought to have known of a body of evidence which would render the invitation to a jury to draw such inferences inappropriate, the Crown infringed the minuter's rights in terms of article 6(1) of the Convention.
vi. That accordingly the conviction should be quashed."
The Appeal Court refused the motion for the additional ground of appeal and the devolution minute to be received. The reasons that it gave for this decision were that they came too late, that sufficient cause had not been shown and that the matters sought to be raised were adequately covered by the existing grounds of appeal. In the course of the hearing, which occupied a total of 13 days, the appellant's counsel restricted his argument to the question whether there had been a miscarriage of justice on the ground of fresh evidence within the meaning of section 106 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995, and on the ground of non-disclosure which he accepted was in effect a duplication of the first ground. The non-disclosure ground of appeal was therefore treated in the same way as the fresh evidence appeal. On 6 May 2008 the Appeal Court refused the appeal against conviction and continued the appeal against sentence to a date to be afterwards fixed: [2008] HCJAC 26, 2008 SCCR 407. The appeal against sentence was subsequently abandoned. The appellant then sought leave of the Appeal Court to appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council against the Appeal Court's refusal to allow the devolution minute to be received.
Having heard argument on 31 October 2008, the Appeal Court (the Lord Justice Clerk, Lord Osborne and Lord Wheatley) refused the application for leave to appeal on 24 March 2009 as incompetent: [2009] HCJAC 27, 2009 SCCR 500. Delivering the opinion of the court, Lord Osborne said in para 13 that the identification of the devolution issue depended on the content of the devolution minute which had been tendered and rejected on 13 November 2007.
"It follows from that that, in any appeal for which leave might be granted by us, the appellant would seek to canvass exactly the same issues as were canvassed in his appeal under section 106 of the 1995 Act, but this time before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. What decision they might or might not reach in any such appeal can only be a matter of conjecture at this stage. However, what is clear is...
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