R v Fergus
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 28 June 1993 |
| Date | 28 June 1993 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) |
Court of Appeal
Before Lord Justice Steyn, Mr Justice Hutchison and Mr Justice Rougier
Criminal procedure - criminal evidence - identification evidence - need for disclosure of photographs and crime reports
It was imperative that in identification cases counsel for the prosecution and for the defence should be alive to the need to disclose photographs and crime reports. If necessary the trial judge ought to be asked for an appropriate order.
The Court of Appeal so stated when giving reasons for allowing, on June 21, the appeal of Ivan Fergus against his conviction on November 29, 1991 at Inner London Crown Court (Judge Rountree and a jury) of assault with intent to rob.
Mr Ben Emmerson, who did not appear below, for the appellant; Mr Laurence Alt for the Crown.
LORD JUSTICE STEYN, giving the judgment of the court, said that in March 1991 the appellant, then a schoolboy aged 13, was on his way to school. He was identified to police officers by a boy aged 17 as the person who, four weeks earlier, had attempted to rob him.
The truth was that the appellant was wholly innocent of the offence.
The issue of the identification of an offender was possibly one of the commonest questions of fact that juries had to consider. It was also one of the issues most susceptible to error.
Visual identification of an offender not known to the observer was a particularly fallible process. Guidance had been given on the problem of visual identification in the landmark judgment in R v TurnbullELR ((1977) 1 QB 224).
In a case dependent on visual identification, and particularly where that was the only evidence, Turnbull made it clear that it was incumbent on a trial judge to place before the jury any specific weaknesses which could arguably be said to have been exposed in the evidence and to do so in a coherent manner so that the cumulative impact of the weaknesses was fairly placed before the jury.
Their Lordships accepted the submissions made on the appellant's behalf that: (1) the judge should have withdrawn the case from the jury; (2) the summing up failed to place the specific weaknesses in the identification evidence adequately before the jury, and was flawed in other respects; (3) in the preparation and conduct of the case the appellant's former counsel and former solicitors had failed to prepare and present his defence properly; (4) the total failure of the police to take statements from alibi...
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R v Jones (Vincent)
...protected from acting upon the type of evidence which, even if believed, experience has shown to be a possible source of injustice." 18 In R v. Fergus (1994) 98 Cr. APP R 325 Steyn L. J, in addressing the issue of evidence of identification, he referred to Lord Widgery's statement in R v Tu......
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R (Mullen) v Secretary of State for the Home Department
... ... The circumstances may justify the conclusion beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant had been innocent. Sometimes the Court of Appeal makes it clear (see Fergus (1994) 98 Cr App R 313 , at 325) and sometimes it can be inferred from the circumstances. The interpretation which I have adopted is therefore perfectly workable. That is why France adopted it and why the Committee of Experts felt able to put it forward as the correct interpretation of article 3 ... ...
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Noel Campbell v The Queen (Jamaica)
...weaknesses in the identification evidence in a coherent manner so that the cumulative impact of any weaknesses was fairly laid out: R v Fergus (Ivan) 98 Cr App R 313; (vi) reminding them that mistaken recognition can occur even of close relatives and friends; and (vii) identifying the evide......
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Liban Yaryare v R
... ... 58 The appellants rely on the following passage in the judgment of this court in R v Fergus (1994) 98 Cr App R 313 at 318: “Generally, it has often been said that it is not essential that a trial judge should rehearse all the arguments of defence counsel: McGreevy v. Director of Public Prosecutions (1973) 57 Cr.App.R. 424, 430 ; [1973] 1 All E.R. 503, 507 ... That is ... ...