Queen on the Application of Vinter v Secretary of State for the Home Department
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Supperstone |
| Judgment Date | 19 May 2016 |
| Neutral Citation | [2016] EWHC 1635 (Admin) |
| Date | 19 May 2016 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
| Docket Number | CO/5891/2014 |
[2016] EWHC 1635 (Admin)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
THE ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London WC2A 2LL
Mr Justice Supperstone
CO/5891/2014
CO/54/2015
Mr Edward Fitzgerald QC and Miss Martha Spurrier (instructed by Bhatt Murphy) appeared on behalf of the Claimants
Mr Ivan Hare (instructed by Government Legal Department) appeared on behalf of the Defendant
These two cases have been linked. Both claimants renew their applications for permission to apply for judicial review, following refusal on the papers by Mr Justice Blake. They applied to stay proceedings pending the decision of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in Hutchinson v United Kingdom, but both applications were refused by Mrs Justice Thirlwall. There was no appeal from those decisions. However during the course of his oral submissions Mr Edward Fitzgerald QC, who appears for the claimants, invited me in my inherent jurisdiction to grant a stay.
Mr Vinter seeks a declaration that Section 269 (4) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 is incompatible with Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights because it obliges a judge to impose a whole life sentence for which there exists no Article 3 ECHR-compliant review mechanism. The claimant is serving a whole life sentence for murder. He was sentenced on 21 April 2008 after pleading guilty to the murder of his estranged wife. This was the claimant's second murder. He was convicted of murdering a work colleague in 1996 and released on licence in 2005. On 25 June 2009 the whole life order was upheld by the Court of Appeal.
The whole life order imposed on the claimant means that he will never be eligible for parole and will die in prison unless the defendant exercises his discretion to release him on compassionate grounds. Section 30 of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997 expressly empowers the defendant to release a life prisoner on licence if he is satisfied that exceptional circumstances justify release on compassionate grounds.
The claimant was the applicant with two others in the European Court of Human Rights in Vinter v United Kingdom [2012] 55 EHRR 34. In that case he challenged the absence of a review mechanism for whole life-sentence prisoners, arguing that it was contrary to Article 3. The claimant submits that despite succeeding in his challenge he remains the victim of an ongoing Article 3 breach because the defendant has failed to put in place any review mechanism, and this ongoing breach is having a seriously adverse impact on his mental health.
The claimant advances four contentions. The first relates to the decision of the Court of Appeal in R v McLaughlin [2014] 1 WLR 3964. An appeal against a whole life order was heard by a specially constituted panel of the Court of Appeal following the Grand Chamber's judgment in Vinter. The Court of Appeal ruled the domestic regime is Article 3 compatible. The claimant contends that the Court of Appeal in McLaughlin erred in its interpretation of the Grand Chamber decision in Vinter. The way Mr Fitzgerald put it in his oral submissions was to suggest that McLaughlin is a case about sentencing, not about the critical issue before this court. However it seems to me to be clear that the court in McLaughlin was convened to respond to the decision of the Grand Chamber in Vinter.
Second, the claimant contends that five European Court of Human Rights decisions, including in particular Öcalan v Turkey and Magyar v Hungary, post-dating McLaughlin, confirm that for a whole-life order to be compliant with Article 3 it must be reviewed after a fixed term, subject to precise published criteria governed by the standards of procedural fairness and communicated to the prisoner at the outset of the sentence.
Third, those subsequent European Court of Human Rights decisions make it clear that the power of discretionary release on compassionate grounds does not fulfil the procedural requirements of Article 3.
Fourth, regardless of how Section 30 of the 1997 Act is operated in practice it is incapable of discharging the procedural obligations of Article 3.
Mr Fitzgerald submits that the current mechanisms for the review of Mr Vinter's whole life sentence fail to meet the standards laid down by the Grand Chamber in his own case in three respects. First, there is no review mechanism that has been in place from the outset of the sentence. Second, he has not been told when a review will take place. Third, he has not been told what he must do to have a prospect of release and what pre-established, clear criteria the review will apply when considering release.
McLaughlin does not, Mr Fitzgerald submits, purport to — and cannot — lay down the exact scope of the Ministry of Justice's duty of review; nor does it address the question of what information the Minister should provide prisoners with about the criteria the Minister will adopt and the stage at which the review would first take place. Mr Fitzgerald referred to recent correspondence between the claimant's lawyers and the Ministry of Justice in relation to this submission. He submits that the response from the defendant is so vague as not to give any yardstick by which to guide his conduct. This point Mr Fitzgerald makes, he says, irrespective of the outcome of the hearing...
To continue reading
Request your trial