R v Anderson (William Ronald)

I have had the advantage of reading in draft the speech to be delivered by my noble and learned friend, Lord Bridge of Harwich. I agree with it and for the reasons my Lord gives I would dismiss the appeal.

I have had the advantage of reading in draft the speech of my noble and learned friend, Lord Bridge of Harwich. I agree with it and for the reasons which he gives I would dismiss the appeal.

For the reasons given in the speech to be delivered by my noble and learned friend Lord Bridge of Harwich, with which I entirely agree, I too would dismiss the appeal.

On 14 March 1983 the appellant was indicted at the Lewes Crown Court with Ahmed Andaloussi, Mohammed Andaloussi and Mohammed Assou that he had conspired with his co-defendants and persons unknown to effect the escape of Ahmed Andaloussi, a prisoner lawfully detained at Her Majesty's Prison, Lewes. The two Andaloussis, who were brothers, pleaded guilty. Assou was duly tried and convicted. The trial in relation to the appellant pursued a somewhat unusual course. At the conclusion of the case for the prosecution, the appellant made an unsworn statement from the dock. The trial judge, Judge Gower Q.C., thereupon invited submissions from counsel for the Crown and counsel for the appellant, in the absence of the jury, as to the effect in law of the appellant's account, if the jury were to accept that it might be a true account, of the part which he had played in the matters leading to the prosecution, according to the evidence of what he had said to police officers called for the Crown and in his unsworn statement from the dock. The learned judge's entirely proper purpose was to seek counsel's assistance in what he saw as a potentially debatable question of law, on which he would in due course have to give an appropriate direction to the jury. However, at the end of the submissions, the judge delivered an extemporary opinion from the bench indicating the conclusion he had reached on the point at issue, his reasons for that conclusion, and how he proposed to direct the jury. This occupies eight foolscap pages of the transcript of the trial and concludes with the judge saying: "That is my ruling." It may seem pedantic to observe that this was not strictly correct, since there was no application before the judge on which he was required to give any ruling. He was merely giving an advance indication, for the benefit of counsel, as to how he would in due course sum up to the jury. But there followed a series of exchanges between the judge and counsel for the appellant in which counsel sought to obtain, and the judge volunteered, further clarification of the "ruling" he had given. In the upshot, counsel for the appellant requested that the indictment be put to him a second time and on being re-arraigned the appellant pleaded guilty.

The appellant appealed against his conviction. Delivering the judgment of the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) (Purchas L.J., Heilbron and Hobhouse J.J.) Purchas L.J. described the procedure followed as unfortunate. I agree that it was certainly irregular in a technical sense. But it does not seem to me, at the end of the day, to present any insuperable difficulty for the purpose of considering the appellant's appeal. First, as the Court of Appeal in my view rightly accepted, it was open to the appellant to challenge his conviction on appeal, notwithstanding his change of plea, if he could show that the judge's so-called "ruling" as applied to the facts which the appellant was prepared to admit was vitiated by such an error of law as would deny him the opportunity of acquittal to which, if the law was correctly applied to those facts, he was entitled. Secondly, although the issue for decision does not emerge with the same clarity as if the appeal were based on an alleged misdirection to the jury or on a complaint of a ruling, properly so called, having been erroneous (and in this respect I fully understand the Court of Appeal's criticism of the procedure followed) it nevertheless seems to me possible, from the totality of the material at the trial leading up to and including the appellant's change of plea, to distil the essential facts which must be taken to have been accepted as true by the appellant, and to determine whether upon those facts the judge was entitled to reach the conclusion, as in effect he did, that the appellant had no defence to the charge of conspiracy which he faced.

In a meticulously careful judgment the Court of Appeal examined at some length the relevant evidential material, the appellant's statement from the dock, the judge's "ruling" and subsequent exchanges with counsel in order to analyse the issue for their decision. Although I do not in any way criticise this approach, I believe it is both possible and legitimate to isolate the issue more shortly by setting out a summary of the relevant facts which were certainly accepted as true on the appellant's behalf in the argument before your Lordships, and proceeding to examine the issue of law to which those facts give rise.

In June 1981 the appellant and Ahmed Andaloussi were both in custody on remand in Lewes prison. Andaloussi was awaiting trial on charges of very serious drug offences and was rightly believed by the appellant to have large sums of money at his disposal. The appellant was on remand in connection with some entirely different matter. He spent one night in the same cell as Andaloussi. The appellant was then confidently expecting that in a short time he would be, as in the event he was, released on bail. During the night they spent together the appellant agreed with Andaloussi to participate in a scheme to effect Andaloussi's escape from prison. Other participants in the scheme were to be Ahmed Andaloussi's brother Mohammed and Mohammed Assou. They were to maintain contact with Ahmed in prison after the appellant's release. The appellant was to be paid £20,000 for his part in the escape scheme. It is not clear, nor is it significant for the purpose of any issue arising in the appeal, how far the details of the escape plan were worked out at the initial meeting in prison between the appellant and Ahmed Andaloussi. What is clear is that either at that meeting or after the appellant's release from prison and after one or more meetings between the appellant and Assou, it was agreed that the appellant would purchase and supply diamond wire, a cutting agent capable of cutting through metal bars, to be smuggled into the prison by Assou or Mohammed Andaloussi to enable Ahmed Andaloussi to escape from his cell. Further steps in the escape plan were to include the provision of rope and a ladder to enable Ahmed Andaloussi to climb on to the roof of an industrial...