R v Berry
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE GEOFFREY LANE |
| Judgment Date | 27 June 1977 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1977] EWCA Crim J0627-2 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) |
| Docket Number | No. 4656/A/76 |
| Date | 27 June 1977 |
[1977] EWCA Crim J0627-2
Lord Justice Geoffrey Lane
Mr. Justice Thesiger
and
Mr. Justice Michael Davies
No. 4656/A/76
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL
CRIMINAL DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
MR. INMAN appeared for the Appellant.
MR. C. CARLING appeared for the Crown.
This is a somewhat unusual case. It arises in this way. On the 6th August, last year, at Knightsbridge Crown Court this Appellant, John Berry, was found by a jury unfit to plead. The indictment against him charged two offences, the first one was that of having an offensive weapon in a public place in his possession and the second count was one of damaging property. As a result of that verdict of unfitness returned by the, jury, it was ordered that he be admitted to such hospital as the Secretary of State might direct. He now appeals to this Court, as he is entitled to, under section 15 of the Criminal Appeal Act, 1968, against the jury's finding.
Section 15 of that Act reads as follows: "Where there has been a determination under section 4 of the Criminal Procedure (Insanity) Act 1964 of the question of a person's fitness to be tried, and the jury has returned a finding that he is under disability, the person may appeal to the Court of Appeal against the finding. (2) An appeal under this section may be – (a) on any ground of appeal which involves a question of law alone; and (b) with the leave of the Court of Appeal, on any ground which involves a question of fact alone, or a question of mixed law and fact, or on any other ground which appears to the Court of Appeal to be a sufficient ground of appeal". Section 16 reads as follows: "(1) The Court of Appeal shall allow an appeal under section 15 of this Act if they are of opinion – (a) that the finding of the jury should be set aside on the ground that under all the circumstances of the case it is unsafe or unsatisfactory; or (b) that the order of the court giving effect to the findings should be set aside on the ground of a wrong decision of any question of law; or (c) that there was a material irregularity in the course of the determination of the question of fitness to be tried; and in any other case (except one to which subsection (2) below applies) shall dismiss the appeal; but they may dismiss the appeal if of opinion that, notwithstanding that the point raised in the appeal might be decided in favour of the Appellant, no miscarriage of justice has actually occurred."
The way in which matters went was this. It was on the application of the defence and not of the prosecution that this matter of unfitness to plead was raised. Consequently it was counsel for the defence, who was not counsel who appears for the Appellant today, who called the witnesses before the Court in order that the jury might hear their evidence. That evidence was given first of all by a doctor called Dr. Michael Browne, a highly qualified doctor and highly qualified, amongst other things, in psychological medicine. He had examined the defendant and had come to the conclusion that the man was undoubtedly suffering from a condition of paranoid schizophrenia. He was much less concerned with the particular state of mind at the time of the trial and even less concerned with the particular matters which it is incumbent upon a jury to consider when deciding whether or not a man is unfit to plead. Indeed it is fair to say that only in one very short passage in his evidence in chief did the doctor deal with the question which was relevant to this issue. His...
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Eastman v R
...It is ordinarily in the interests of an accused person to be brought to trial, rather than to suffer such incarceration. 25 In the case of Berry17 Geoffrey Lane LJ, criticising a direction to a jury empanelled to determine an issue of fitness to plead, said: ‘It may very well be that the ju......
- Lau Chi Sing v PP
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R v Smith (Wallace Duncan) (No 4)
...second appeal but this does not enable the appellant to revisit legal issues decided against him. In support of his contention he cites R v Berry No. 2 [1991] 2 AER 789 at p795 and R v Roberts [1990] Crim Law Review 122. 24 We do not accept Mr Barnes's approach. The Criminal Appeals Act 199......
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R v Erskine; R v Williams
...at the time of trial it does not follow that he was incapable of “following a trial or giving evidence or instructing counsel and so on”. ( R v Berry (1970) 66 Cr App R 156). In other words, a defendant is not to be deemed unfit to plead merely because he will not accept what appears to be ......