R v Church
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | MR. JUSTICE EDMUND DAVIES |
| Judgment Date | 22 March 1965 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1965] EWCA Crim J0322-1 |
| Docket Number | No. 1761/1964 |
| Court | Court of Criminal Appeal |
| Date | 22 March 1965 |
[1965] EWCA Crim J0322-1
Mr. Justice Edmund Davies
Mr. Justice Marshall
and
Mr. Justice Widgery
No. 1761/1964
IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEAL
Royal Courts of Justice
MR. A.E. JAMES, Q.C. and MR. D.C. SMOUT appeared as Counsel for the Appellant.
MR. W.A. SIME, Q.C. and MR. H.J. BERRY appeared as Counsel for the Crown.
In July last at Nottingham Assizesm the appellant, having been indicted for and acquitted of the murder of Sylvia Jeannette Nott, was found guilty of manslaughter and was sentenced by Mr. Justice Glyn-Jones to 15 years' imprisonment. He now appeals to this Court on a point of law against that conviction, and he also applies for leave to appeal against sentence.
The facts may be shortly stated. On Sunday, May 31st, 1964, the dead body of Mrs. Nott was found in the River Ouse within a few yards of the defendant's van which stood near the bank. The corpse bore the marks of grave injuries. The face had been battered, the hyoid bone had been broken and there had been some degree of manual strangulation. These injuries were likely to have caused unconsciousness and eventually death, but they were inflicted a half-hour or an hour before death supervened and did not in fact cause it. According to the medical evidence her injuries were inflicted not long before Mrs. Nott was thrown into the river, but she was alive when that was done, she continued to breathe for an appreciable time afterwards, and the eventual cause of death was drowning.
When the accused was first interviewed about the matter he lied, but ultimately signed a statement admitting complicity in the death. He then said that he had taken Mrs. Nott to his van for sexual purposes, that he was unable to satisfy her and she then reproached him and slapped his face; they then had a fight during which he knocked her out and thereafter she only moaned. The statement continued: "I was shaking her to wake her for about half and hour, but she didn't wake up, so I panicked and dragged her out of the van and put her in the river". He repeated this account at his trial and then said, and said for the first time, "I thought she was dead".
The outline of the case for the prosecution, therefore, was this: The gravity of the injuries inflicted during life clearly pointed to an intention by the accused to cause grievous bodily harm to or the death of Mrs. Nott. Her death was in fact brought about by the action of the accused in shortly thereafter throwing her still-living body into the river. Did it make any difference, as far as the murder charge was concerned, whether or not the accused believed she was then already dead? On this question the learned trial Judge gave this direction at page 26 CD: "His case is that he genuinely and honestly believed that she was dead. I direct you that, if that his genuine and honest belief, then when he threw what he believed to be a dead body into the river, he obviously was not actuated by any intention to cause death or grievous bodily harm; you cannot cause death or serious bodily harm to a corpse, Therefore the question for you is: Have the prosecution satisfied you that his story told before you today. that he believed she was dead, is untrue: and that the truth is that he threw her into the river not caring whether she was alive or dead but simply to get her out of his van, so that he would not be caught and punished for what he had already done to her?"
The Jury were thus told in plain terms that they could not convict of murder unless it had been proved that the accused knew that Mrs. Nott was still alive when he threw her Into the river or (at least) that he did not then believe she was dead. We venture to express the view that such a direction was unduly benevolent to the accused and that the Jury should have been told that it was still open to them to convict of murder, notwithstanding that the accused may have thought his blows and attempt at strangulation had actually produced death when he threw the body in the river, if they regarded the accused's behaviour from the moment he first struck her to the moment when he threw her into the river as a series of acts designed to cause death or grievous bodily harm. SeeThabo Meli v. Regina, 1954, 1 All England Reports at page 373. In the present case the Jury, directed as they were, acquitted of murder. They had, however, been told that the trial Judge could see no ground upon which the accused could be acquitted of all crime and they convicted of manslaughter. Against that conviction the accused now appeals on the ground that there was a basic misdirection when the Jury were told (as they were) that, as to the offence of manslaughter, it was irrelevant whether the accused genuinely and honestly believed the body to be dead at the time of immersion.
Against the background of the basic direction regarding the nature of the Crown's burden of proof as to murder, it seems to this Court that at least three possible bases of the manslaughter verdict call for consideration:- (a) Criminal Negligence, A grosser case of criminal negligence it would be difficult to imagine. As the trial Judge put it at page 28 at B to C:- "What steps did he take to find out whether she was alive or dead? He seems to have made no attempt, according to him, to find out whether she was breathing or not. He seems to have made no attempt to feel whether her heart was beating. Surely these are elementary steps. You have then nothing left but his bare unsupported statement: 'I thought she was dead'. All he had done had been to shake her and she had not recovered consciousness. Do you think that persuaded him that she was dead, or do you not?" That passage was directed to the charge of murder. As to manslaughter, the following direction was given at page 31D to F:- "…If, not knowing whether the woman was dead or not, and not having taken the trouble to find out whether she was dead or not, he throws her body into the river, you may (if you think fit) come to the conclusion that that was a negligent act done utterly recklessly without regard to the danger to life or limb that would be caused by it - and that would be another ground on which the throwing of the body into the river would be manslaughter".
That direction has been strongly criticised as wholly inadequate in...
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