R v O'Brien (Patrick)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE |
| Judgment Date | 05 June 1974 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1974] EWCA Crim J0605-1 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) |
| Docket Number | No. 1629/R/74 |
| Date | 05 June 1974 |
[1974] EWCA Crim J0605-1
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL
CRIMINAL DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
The Lord Chief Justice of England (Lord Widgery)
Mr. Justice Park
and
Mr. Justice Forbes
No. 1629/R/74
MR. L. BLOM-COOPER, Q.C., and MR. A. NEWMAN appeared on behalf of the Appellant.
MR. H. SKINNER, Q.C., and MR. I. JUDGE appeared on behalf of the Crown.
On the 8th April last at Birmingham Crown Court this Appellant was convicted on two counts of conspiracy to effect an escape from prison. He was sentenced to three years' imprisonment on each count concurrent, and he now appeals against his conviction and sentence.
Charged with him was another man called Lennon, who was charged in respect of the second offence only, and he was acquitted by the jury.
The substance of the charges was this, that under Count 1 it was alleged that there was a conspiracy between the Appellant and persons unknown between a date in September 1973 and a date in January 1974 to effect the escape of persons from Her Majesty's Prison at Bedford. That was a charge against the present Appellant only.
Count 2 charged the Appellant and Lennon, and persons unknown, that between the 1st December, 1973 and the 7th January, 1974 they conspired to effect the escape of persons from Her Majesty's Prison at Winson Green.
To explain the relevance of those two charges it is necessary to say at once that shortly before these events three men called Campbell, Mealey and Sheridan had been charged with robbery against a background of their support for Irish Nationalism. By that I mean that it was alleged that they had committed an offence of robbery, they being persons actively concerned with the cause of Irish Nationalism and operating in concert with those objectives and intentions in Luton, and that they had committed this bank robbery in order to obtain proceeds for the cause which they supported. Those three were all in Bedford Prison at about the time of the alleged offence relative to that prison, and Sheridan was in Winson Green Prison at the time of the offence relative to that.
In effect, the prosecution were saying that this Appellant with others unknown had conspired to effect the escape of the "Luton Three", as they became known, from Bedford, and quite separately and independently had conspired with Lennon and others unknown to effect the escape of Sheridan from Winson Green.
The matter came to light in this way, that on the 6th January, 1974, when Sheridan was in Winson Green Prison, a prison officer saw the Appellant taking a photograph of part of the wall of the prison. It no doubt struck him as a somewhat odd thing for a passer-by to do, and he went and questioned him and asked him what he was doing. He said "I am just trying my camera out mate." It was an instamatic camera and the photograph was produced on the spot. In particular it was a photograph of a part of the wall of Winson Green Prison, and one may say a particularly vulnerable part of that wall, because it was a photograph of the wall at a point where a building adjoined it and thus offered a step to the climber to assist him in surmounting the wall if that was his objective.
The prison officer was not satisfied with the Appellant's explanation that he was just trying out the camera, so he took him into the prison and the Police came on the scene. Although the Appellant made no written statement, he made a number of oral statements to Police Officers, the gist of which was that he had come up from London with Lennon, his friend, that they had come up primarily to look up an old acquaintance and had tried one or two public houses to find that old acquaintance, they had failed to do so and quite unexpectedly they had found themselves in the vicinity of the prison. It was at that point, so the Appellant said, that he was minded to try out the efficacy of his camera by taking a photograph of the prison wall.
The story of the Appellant was really blatantly untrue and it is not the least bit surprising that the jury rejected it. He had in his possession an "A to Z Guide" to Birmingham, which fell open at the page showing Vinson Green Prison, and he told a number of transparent lies in connection with his account of the matter. That he had gone to Birmingham with a view to photographing the prison, and no doubt with a view to using that photograph for some purpose of his own later, was really incapable of denial and such denials as the Appellant put forward at the trial were rejected by the jury, one would have thought almost inevitably.
Lennon's account of the affair was that he had come up with the Appellant to Birmingham as company for him, that they had gone abortively to the two public houses to find their friend, as the Appellant had said, and that then finding themselves in the vicinity of Vinson Green Prison they had stopped and the Appellant had got out his camera and had taken this photograph, Lennon saying that he did not know that it was going to be done and was in no sense a conspirator or party to the taking of the photograph at all.
When the Appellant's house in Luton was searched, there was found in the house a variety of literature of a kind which might be associated with those who have extremist views on the Irish problem, and there was also found two maps or plans. The first was a plan of Bedford showing the prison and showing certain routes from the prison to the motorways: obviously a document which might have been prepared by someone who was minded to assist in the escape of a prisoner from Bedford Prison. Furthermore, there was another document, according to the prosecution, which was a crude attempt to prepare a plan of some part of the interior of Bedford Prison. It was said by the prosecution that this was a document obviously produced to assist in some escape attempt. It was found with the other documents in the Appellant's home and no doubt clearly associated him with some scheme which involved the entry into Bedford Prison and presumably assistance in escape.
Those were the very simple facts upon which the jury had to reach their conclusion, and it is right to say at once that the summing-up provided by the learned Judge was in every respect except one an absolute model of its kind. He gave them a very lucid account of the essentials of the crime of conspiracy. He instructed them in impeccable terms as to the extent to which a jury can draw inferences from established primary facts, and he indicated to them that they could only draw the inference that there was a conspiracy, that is to say an agreement between these men or either of them and others, if on the primary facts, which I have already related, the inference that an escape attempt had been agreed to was inevitably to be drawn.
He also went on...
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