Paul v Chief Constable of Humberside Police
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Lord Justice Brooke,Lord Justice Chadwick,Lord Justice Maurice Kay |
| Judgment Date | 17 March 2004 |
| Neutral Citation | [2004] EWCA Civ 308 |
| Docket Number | Case No: B2/2003/1902 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Date | 17 March 2004 |
[2004] EWCA Civ 308
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM Kingston upon Hull County Court
Judge Heppel QC
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand,
London, WC2A 2LL
Lord Justice Brooke
Vice-President of The Court of Appeal (Civil Division)
Lord Justice Chadwick and
Lord Justice Maurice Kay
Case No: B2/2003/1902
Patrick O'Connor QC & Stephen Simblet (instructed by Hickman & Rose) for the Appellant
Nicholas Wilcox (instructed by Legal Services Unit, Humberside Police) for the Respondent
This is an appeal by the claimant Jason Paul from an order of Judge Heppel QC sitting at Sheffield with a jury in an action proceeding in the Kingston-upon-Hull County Court on 28 th July 2003 whereby he directed that judgment should be entered for the defendant. In the action Mr Paul claimed damages for false imprisonment and malicious prosecution, and at the centre of this appeal is his challenge to a ruling made by the judge in a long reasoned judgment at the end of the trial to the effect that there were no factual issues to be left to the jury to decide. Against that background the judge ruled that there was sufficient evidence available to the police to arrest Mr Paul and thereafter to charge him and detain him in police custody until he was released on conditional bail by magistrates the morning after he was charged, and that he had failed to prove the absence of reasonable and probable cause in the initiation of his prosecution. The judge therefore made the order which is now under appeal.
The facts of the matter were along the following lines. On the night of 31 st March 1998 Mr Paul attended a function at the Waterfront Club in Hull. There were features of this function that were of interest to the small black community in Hull, of which Mr Paul was a member. Mr Chris Alder, who was also black, attended the same function. He was a former paratrooper in his early 30s, and Mr Paul knew him quite well. In the early hours of the morning of 1 st April there was an altercation in the club between Mr Alder and a young man called Mr Ramm. Mr Ramm was ejected from the club, and when the club closed at 2am Mr Paul saw Mr Alder outside, when a fracas was developing again between the two men.
Some of the incidents outside the club were recorded on closed circuit television. Mr Alder was filmed with his shirt off, anxious to get into more fights. Mr Paul consistently maintained that the only reason for his intervention at this stage was to stop Mr Alder from getting into further trouble. The film did not include everything that happened between Mr Paul and Mr Alder. Mr Paul's account of the matter was to the effect that when he intervened Mr Alder struck him twice, and he then hit back. In fact he appears to have hit Mr Alder so hard that he broke one of his teeth off at the root and loosened another and he also cut Mr Alder's lip. In the event Mr Alder fell to the ground, hit the back of his head against some cobblestones, and lost consciousness for a short while.
An ambulance was called, and Mr Alder was taken to Hull Royal Infirmary, where he behaved very badly. He refused to co-operate with any examination or treatment, and he continually spat and urinated on the floor. The hospital authorities summoned the police, who arrested him and took him to Queen's Gardens Police Station, where he was laid on the floor in the custody suite. His hands were handcuffed behind his back, his trousers were down between his knees, and he was plainly in some distress.
The judge and counsel watched a video of the events in the custody suite which was not shown to the jury. The first part of the video film showed the police officers doing little apart from discussing what charge, if any, they could levy against Mr Alder. There then came a time when one of the police officers, followed by the others, became concerned to discover whether Mr Alder was continuing to breathe. They made attempts to resuscitate him and called in paramedics to no effective purpose. The judge said that Mr Alder died in plainly distressing and unpleasant circumstances on the floor of the custody suite. About 11 minutes appear to have elapsed between the time of his arrival in the police station and the time he stopped breathing.
D/I Brookes was the senior detective on call that night. He was rung up at home at 4.55am, when he gave instructions that the scene of death should be preserved. He arrived at the police station half an hour later. That morning Mr Alder's death in custody was reported to the Police Complaints Authority, which commissioned the West Yorkshire police to institute an inquiry. So far as the events inside and outside the Waterfront Club were concerned D/Supt Bates was appointed the senior investigating officer. D/C/I Davison reported to him, and he led a team of officers which included D/I Brookes, Sgt Ralphs and a number of detective constables who worked in pairs. D/C Wade and D/C Mainland made up one of these pairs. All these police officers gave evidence at the trial apart from Supt Bates and D/C Wade (who had suffered second degree burns shortly before the trial, which he was too ill to attend). D/I Brookes and Sgt Ralphs were both based at the police station where Mr Alder's death occurred.
The five police officers who were in the custody suite were suspended from duty about a month after Mr Alder's death,. More than two years later a very long inquest culminated in a verdict of "gross negligence" unlawful killing. A prosecution for manslaughter followed at the Teesside Crown Court in June 2002, but this came to an end when the judge ruled that there was no case to answer. Judge Heppel said that the cause of Mr Alder's death remained unclear, and that some of the medical witnesses at the inquest had changed their stance at the criminal trial. He added that these police officers were also acquitted of disciplinary offences.
Just before 1pm on 1 st April 1998 Mr Paul learned that there had been a death in police custody, and he soon realised that it was Mr Alder who had died. He appreciated that the police would want to speak to him about his dealings with Mr Alder the previous evening. He therefore consulted a local solicitor, Mr Cunnah, who arranged to meet him at a police station. Mr Cunnah phoned the police and told them that he would be attending with Mr Paul later that day.
At 2pm D/C Wade and D/C Mainland attended a police briefing at Tower Grange police station, which had been chosen as the base for this inquiry. They then visited the outside of the club and went on to make inquiries locally. Once Mr Cunnah had told the police that Mr Paul had been involved in a fight with Mr Alder a decision was taken at a senior level that if he repeated this admission at the police station he would be arrested on suspicion of murder. It was not clear on the evidence who actually took this decision, although D/I Brookes said he would have been involved. At all events D/C Mainland told the jury that they were acting on this instruction when Mr Paul came to the station. He arrived at about 6.20pm with Mr Cunnah. There followed this exchange:
D/C Wade What do you want to tell us?
Mr Paul My mate was arguing with another man. I tried to separate them. The man started throwing punches at me and I hit him once.
D/C Wade As a result of what you have said, I am arresting you for murder.
On this appeal no complaint is made of the fact that the police suspected Mr Paul of murder. Complaint is made, however, of the fact that there was no need to arrest him. He had come to the police station voluntarily, and he was willing to tell the police all he knew about the matter. In the event he was detained in custody without any further questioning, although D/C Wade and D/C Mainland would have interviewed him that evening if he had not been taken to hospital on the advice of a police doctor for treatment to an injury to his hand. Before going off duty that night the two detective constables had ascertained from the police national computer the information that Mr Paul had a record for violence, including the use of a weapon: the accuracy of this record was subsequently in issue at the trial. They had also visited the Waterfront Club in order to watch what was shown on video of the events outside the club. D/C Mainland told the jury that the person who showed it did not know how to operate it properly, and that he did not recall seeing the video working properly until after Mr Paul had left police custody. That evening he just saw segments of the relevant picture, which jumped from scene to scene.
While this was all going on, an autopsy had been conducted, and at 8pm the police were told that the pathologist's initial conclusion was that although Mr Alder had serious facial and head injuries consistent with a serious and violent assault, no causal link had been established between the injuries to his face and the back of his head and his eventual death. D/Supt Bates and D/C/I Davison therefore decided that nobody should be charged with murder or manslaughter in connection with Mr Alder's death until a definitive cause of his death was ascertained.
Mr Cunnah came back to the police station at 11.30am the following morning, where he saw D/C/I Davison and D/C Mainland before seeing his client. They told him that although the post-mortem revealed serious facial and head injuries, the punch had not been the cause of death. The pathologist had said that it was very unlikely that the punch was linked with the death....
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