R v Davis (George)

JurisdictionEngland & Wales
JudgeTHE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE
Judgment Date11 December 1975
Judgment citation (vLex)[1975] EWCA Crim J1211-2
Docket NumberNo. 1705/A/75
CourtCourt of Appeal (Criminal Division)
Date11 December 1975

[1975] EWCA Crim J1211-2

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL

CRIMINAL DIVISION

Royal Courts of Justice

Before:

The Lord Chief Justice of England (Lord Widgery)

Lord Justice Bridge

and

Mr. Justice Park

No. 1705/A/75

Regina
and
George John Davis

MR. J. MARRIAGE, Q.C. and MR. D. WHITEHOUSE appeared on behalf of the Applicant.

MR. K. RICHARDSON and MR. CONNOR appeared on behalf of the Crown.

THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE
1

On the 18th March of this year at the Central Criminal Court this Applicant George John Davis was convicted by a majority of 11 to 1 on one count of robbery and one count of wounding with intent to resist arrest.

2

Jointly charged with him were three other men, England, Ishmael and Hole. In one way or another, and at one time or another, they were acquitted on both the charges of which the Applicant was convicted. Davis therefore at the end of the day remained the only one who carried a conviction in respect of this incident, and in respect of his two convictions he was sentenced to seventeen years' imprisonment in regard to the robbery and three years consecutive in regard to the wounding with intent, making twenty years in all.

3

He applies to this Court for leave to appeal against his conviction and sentence. The case is one which understandably has given rise to a good deal of public interest, and I think it right before embarking on a consideration of the problems which the case itself throws up just to explain briefly what the function of this Court is. We do not sit here to try the case again. Unlike a jury we do not have the advantage of seeing the witnesses and observing how they behave themselves. In England the constitutional instrument for deciding whether a man is guilty or innocent is the jury, and if the jury bring in a verdict of guilty then we do not upset it in this Court unless there is some irregularity in the trial, some misdirection, something wrong, which may cause us to feel that the jury were misled and not given their normal and proper free choice. With the assistance of Counsel that is what we have been doing for some three days this week.

4

To look at the circumstances of the matter in broad and very general outline: the offence charged against Davis took place on the 4th April, 1974. I say it took place because, although there has been intense controversy as to whether Davis himself was concerned in it, that there was a robbery was never in doubt, and a carefully planned robbery at that. It took place on the 4th April, 1974 at the Ilford headquarters of the London Electricity Board. That was apparently the day upon which the security van brought the wages in for the LEB employees at Ilford. The general system was that the van drove into a yard at the rear of the premises, the security man checked that glass doors of the main building were locked so that the guards could not be outflanked on that side, and then having done that they carried the money – some £7,500 – up the stairs to the cash office.

5

On this day things did not work out like that because just at the moment when the security men were beginning to go towards and up the stairs an estate car drew up outside the building and from the estate car emerged a man with a gas cylinder on his shoulder. He was quickly joined by three others who materialised from somewhere else. They went up to the main door of the building and, using the gas cylinder as a hammer, they broke the main glass doors and thus outflanked the security men in the area I have already described. They took the two suitcases full of cash which the security men had been carrying and retraced their steps down into the street and turned left handed to run towards the car, which was conveniently left just round the next corner.

6

So far the robbery had no doubt gone strictly according to plan. But what had not been planned for was the fact that outside the LEB at this time there were two police officers in plain clothes in what is called a "nondescript" vehicle carrying out observations. One of the officers, Temporary Detective Constable Grove, very rapidly realising that something suspicious was going on, got in touch with Scotland Yard on his radio with the result that the alarm was given very early; it was given almost before the robbers had left the building. Having passed the word on his radio, Constable Grove, who was obviously a man of extreme gallantry and persistence, armed himself with a tommy bar and proceeded to do his best, as one may imagine, to resist the robbers as they came out of the building. Appleton, the other officer in the nondescript vehicle, was equipped with three cameras and he proceeded to take a number of photographs showing the robbers running away and showing Grove's attempts to stop them. Certainly in the experience of this Court it is the first time we have been privileged to see a photographic record of a vital part of the very facts which form the basis of the case. These photographs do give a graphic picture of the four men running away and Grove doing his best to stop them, and eventually in the last sequence one sees Grove trying to persuade the driver of a lorry to ram the robbers' car, but it all came to no avail and they made their getaway in the estate car to which I have referred.

7

They changed their cars quite soon, and one gets the impression that the early warning given by Constable Grove meant that the police cars were quickly in the area because the robbers changed out of the estate car into a Leyland 1800 vehicle which they had probably placed for the purpose after quite a short distance. They did not succeed then in making their getaway in the 1800 and it was not long before they changed again into a Zodiac, and they carry on doubling back and dodging here and there in these various vehicles. At this point in the Zodiac they then get on to Woodford Avenue, which is a dual carriageway road with a physical barrier down the middle, and which leads up to a roundabout called Charlie Brown's roundabout.

8

It happened on this occasion that the traffic approaching Charlie Brown's roundabout from the east was heavy and a substantial traffic jam built up. The robbers' Zodiac got caught in the traffic jam, despite their efforts to get out on the grass verge, and by the same token many of the pursuing police were also stopped by the traffic jam and unable to get through to the Zodiac. The outcome of that difficulty was that the robbers, or some of them, because one does not know exactly how many were still in the party at any particular time, left the fence separating the two carriageways of Woodford Avenue and commandeered two motor cars travelling eastbound on that carriageway and in those two motor cars made the next stage of their escape.

9

Of the two cars one was a Dodge and the other was a smaller car, but the latter passes out of the story at this stage and need not be referred to again. The Dodge was used by a number of the robbers – one does not know exactly how many – to continue their attempt to escape. In the Dodge, after another mile or so of criss-cross routing, an accident occurred. The Dodge struck a tree and it stopped not to run again near a building called Dr. Barnardo's Homes in Cranbrook Road, Barkingside.

10

Whoever was left in the Dodge at the time of the crash proceeded to run away, and some of those two, or at least one of those possible two, was seen by witnesses who were present on the spot. Notably in the grounds of Dr. Barnardo's Homes there were two ladies – a Mrs. Osborne and a Mrs. Bone. They both saw a man running who had clearly come from the Dodge vehicle. They speak of that man as one man, and he undoubtedly was the same man, that is to say each was speaking of the same man, and Mrs. Osborne at an early stage identified this man as England whereas Mrs. Bone initially did not identify the man at all, but, as we shall see presently, she did of course identify him later on.

11

One of the men who had travelled in the Dodge, and it may or may not be the man seen by Mrs. Osborne or Mrs. Bone, tried to commandeer a further vehicle to continue his escape. He approached a Mr. Moisey, who was driving a red Commer van, and sought to get a lift from Mr. Moisey, but Mr. Moisey was having none of it and told him to go away in terse and brusque terms.

12

This man who had approached Moisey then stopped a car coming along the road driven by a woman with a child beside her, made the woman move up into the passenger seat, got in and drove off to a point from which he could make his final escape, and although the money was recovered in the grounds of Dr. Barnardo's Homes, at the end of the day nobody had been arrested and therefore there was no-one who was immediately available to assist the police in their inquiries.

13

That is a rough outline of the affairs of the day in question, and in the course of inquiries fairly soon afterwards the police found their way to George Davis and also to examine the records of a mini car firm known as Regal Car Hire, run by a man called Terry Calvey. The reason for that was simply this. George Davis had worked for about a week for this mini car organisation, and the period of about a week embraced the 4th April, 1974, the day of the robbery.

14

The system upon which the mini car business worked was simply this. The drivers who sought to work there brought their own cars, paid their own running expenses and kept whatever earnings they received whilst driving, but they paid to Mr. Calvey, who really ran the business and organised it, a weekly fee of £8 to compensate for their having the advantage of the use of his telephone and having his office as a base on which the mini car work could take place, and also because his connection would bring work to...

To continue reading

Request your trial
10 cases
  • Joseph Shane Merchant Appellant v The Queen Respondent [ECSC]
    • Antigua and Barbuda
    • Court of Appeal (Antigua and Barbuda)
    • 24 Junio 1996
    ...... . 4 On this issue, the general principle of law as summed up byLord Widgery CJ in R v Davis 62 Cr. App. R. 164 at p.201, is that a jury may not when they have once retired to consider their verdict be given any additional evidence, any ......
  • Joseph Shane Merchant Appellant v The Queen Respondent [ECSC]
    • Antigua and Barbuda
    • Court of Appeal (Antigua and Barbuda)
    • 24 Junio 1996
    ...... . 4 On this issue, the general principle of law as summed up byLord Widgery CJ in R v Davis 62 Cr. App. R. 164 at p.201, is that a jury may not when they have once retired to consider their verdict be given any additional evidence, any ......
  • R v Maggs
    • United Kingdom
    • Court of Appeal (Criminal Division)
    • 27 Febrero 1990
    ......The locus classicus wasR v Davis (George)UNK ((1976) 62 Cr App R 194, 201) in which Lord Widgery, Lord Chief Justice, stated that the jury could come back and ask the judge to repeat ......
  • R v Stewart (Angela)
    • United Kingdom
    • Court of Appeal (Criminal Division)
    • 22 Marzo 1989
    ...they have once retired to consider their verdict be given any additional evidence, any additional matter or material to assist them (see R. v. Davis (1976) 62 Cr.App.R. 194 at 201) where Lord Widgery G.J. said: 20 "They (the jury) can come back and ask the judge to repeat for their benefit ......
  • Request a trial to view additional results

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT