R v Cascoe

On the 10th June of last year the Appellant was found guilty of murder at the Central Criminal Court and sentenced to imprisonment for life. He now appeals against that conviction.

Before considering the grounds of his appeal, it will be convenient to state the facts, which lie within a very short compass. At about 5 o'clock in the early morning of January 19th of last year a party was still going on at a dance hall somewhere in North London. At that late or early hour a man called 'Manny' Francis, with three or four other guests, arrived at the party. The Appellant had been there for some time. Very shortly after 'Manny' Francis arrived, there was a good deal of evidence that the Appellant shot 'Manny' Francis. He was seen with a smoking pistol in his hand. The evidence showed conclusively that he shot 'Manny' Francis no fewer than seven times and 'Manny' Francis died.

According to the case for the prosecution, the Appellant had come to that dance hall armed with the pistol. Evidence had been called of persons who had seen him with the pistol prior to the 19th January. The Appellant, however, when he gave evidence, said that it was entirely untrue to say that he had ever possessed that pistol or any other.

His case was that shortly after he got to the dance hall he saw 'Manny' Francis, whom he had known for some two years and with whom he was on very bad terms owing to an association which the Appellant had formerly formed with 'Manny' Francis' stepdaughter. Indeed, on one occasion 'Manny' Francis had attacked him with a knife.

According to the Appellant, 'Manny' Francis came up to him, put his hand in his pocket as if to produce a pistol and then half drew a pistol from his pocket. The Appellant, who says that he was a karate expert, acted very promptly. He administered what is called a karate chop Just above Francis' right wrist and caused him to drop the pistol on the floor. The Appellant then picked up the pistol. As he did so, so he said, he saw four or five of Francis' cronies advancing towards him. According to the Appellant, he knew that they were all violent men and carried knives, whereupon in order to defend himself and to dissuade Francis' cronies from attacking him with their knives, he fired at Francis and hit him with all seven shots. There was no suggestion by the Appellant that he fired at Francis other than with the intention of hitting him.

The defence that was run at the trial was based on three grounds: first of all, that this man was suffering from diminished responsibility; secondly, that he was acting in self-defence; thirdly, that if the actions which he took exceeded what could reasonably be done by way of self-defence, the Jury would be entitled to find the Appellant guilty of manslaughter.

The Judge in a very careful and thorough summing-up explained the elements of murder to the Jury, and he dealt extremely fairly and very fully with self-defence. He was at pains to point out to the Jury that the onus, as far as self-defence was concerned, rested from beginning to end upon the Crown. It was not for the Appellant to establish self-defence; it was for the Crown to negative self-defence. Unless the Jury were satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that self-defence had been negatived, then the Appellant was entitled to be acquitted completely. No criticism is, or could have been, made of that part of the summing-up.

The Appellant now complains that the learned Judge did not deal with the third point which I have mentioned, namely, that even although the Jury rejected self-defence, they could find this Appellant guilty of manslaughter if they came to the conclusion that or were in doubt as to whether he had used more force than was reasonably necessary. This Court is not at all surprised that the learned Recorder did not think it necessary to mention that point. In the circumstances of this case the point was wholly unarguable. No doubt there are cases where self-defence is raised and negatived by the Jury in which it would be possible for the Jury to return a verdict of not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter: for example, if a man who is attacked draws a gun and fires it in the direction of his attacker not intending to shoot him, but only to frighten him, that is to say, intending to miss him. Nevertheless he kills him. The Jury could in such a case conclude that self-defence was negatived. Of course, it was unreasonable to draw a gun to resist the kind of attack in question. The Jury might be satisfied that it was criminally dangerous or negligent to fire the gun, but not satisfied that there was any intention to do grievous bodily harm, let alone kill. Therefore, although self-defence would be negatived, the accused would be guilty not of murder but only of manslaughter.

On the facts of this case such a finding would have been perversely impossible. This Appellant never challenged, indeed he asserted that he fired at Francis seven times intending to hit him and, therefore, necessarily to kill him or at least to do him grievous bodily harm. The only circumstances in which the Jury could have brought in a verdict of manslaughter would have been if they had found diminished responsibility or provocation. Of course, if they found self-defence, he would have been entitled to a clear acquittal, but if they negatived self-defence and negatived provocation and did not accept diminished responsibility, the only possible verdict which they could have brought in was the verdict which they, in fact, brought in, namely, one of murder. So, there is nothing in the view of this Court in the third point made by Mr. Platts-Mills, and I mention it first merely to dispose of it.

I should perhaps say that as far as diminished responsibility is concerned, there is no appeal against the Jury's rejection of that defence. According to both counsel, the accused behaved in the oddest way in Court, but the medical evidence that was called did not establish diminished responsibility. Dr. Neustatter, for example, said that there was a general grandiosity compatible with paranoid schizophrenia. "There was a possibility that this man's mental responsibility was diminished, but whether it was substantial it was...