R v Hall (Edward Leonard)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | MR. JUSTICE BOREHAM |
| Judgment Date | 11 March 1985 |
| Neutral Citation | [1985] EWCA Crim J0311-4 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1985] EWCA Crim J0311-3 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) |
| Docket Number | No. 3095/C3/84 |
| Date | 11 March 1985 |
[1985] EWCA Crim J0311-3
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL
CRIMINAL DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
The Lord Chief Justice of England (Lord Lane)
Mr. Justice Boreham
and
Mr. Justice Macpherson
No. 3095/C3/84
MR. T. OWEN appeared on behalf of the Appellant.
MR. L. WILLIAMS appeared on behalf of the Crown.
On 4th April, 1984, this appellant, Edward Leonard Hall, was convicted at the Crown Court at Gloucester before his Honour Judge Braithwaite and a jury of one count of handling stolen goods. 3rd May, 1984, he was sentenced for that offence to 3 years' imprisonment. He now appeals by leave of the single judge against his conviction. The same judge refused his application for leave to appeal against sentence; that application, we understand, has not been renewed.
At the same court, two others were convicted of offences connected with this handling. Terence Biro, aged 55, pleaded guilty to burglary and was sentenced to 2 years' imprisonment and another, George Grey, pleaded guilty to the same burglary and was sentenced to 2 years' imprisonment which was suspended for 2 years.
Those two accused, Biro and Grey, on the night of August 8/9th, 1983, broke into a mansion in Gloucestershire. The occupants were away. They stole pictures, silver, china, clocks and other articles and three suitcases in order to transport them. The total estimated value of their haul was £26,000. At about 8.40 the next morning (that is, 9th August) Regional Crime Squad officers saw the two men being met by this appellant outside a block of flats in Peckham Rye. They handed the appellant a suitcase, they each carried another suitcase and they all entered the flats. About ten minutes later Sergeant Lynch and other of those offices knocked at the door of one of the flats in that building. They heard some running about within the flat. The door was eventually opened by the appellant and the co-accused, Biro and Grey, were present inside together with the appellant's mother. On the floor was a blanket concealing a substantial number of silver spoons and forks which the appellant said Grey and Biro had brought. He said that they were house clearers and that he was a dealer in antiques. All three of them were arrested. The three suitcases and the articles they had contained were seized. There were on the floor some paintings, some silver cutis as in a kitchen drawer and some china articles had been tidily arranged on shelves in the room and on the television set. All those articles wore ultimately identified by the owners of the property in .
The appellant maintained throughout the interview that the other two, Biro and Grey, must have tried to hide some of the property when the police knocked on the door. He said they told him that the property had come from a house clearance somewhere in the Cotswolds, but he said when he saw the property he realised that this was no house clearance in the accepted sense of that term. For their part, Biro and Grey admitted the burglary and made statements to that effect. The appellant said in the course of interview that the reason that the two burglars had come to his mother's house was that he and his own family were going on holiday that day and they did not want to interfere with the preparations being made by his own wife. He said when they started to hide property when they knew that the police were at the door he realised that it must have been stolen.
He was interviewed a second time. On this occasion he said that he had been told that Grey and Biro had admitted carrying out the burglary and he then admitted that he knew they were bringing him stolen property. He said when he came to give evidence that that was not intended as an admission; it was really a sarcastic remark in answer to a police question. He also told the police that Grey had telephoned him at about 7.45 on the morning of their arrest and told him that they had some gear. Later still he said that they really did not tell him where the property came from, simply that they had been on the Cotswolds all night. He admitted that he would have bought the property if the price had been right. The Crown's case, of course, was that he knew that there had been a burglary, he knew from the telephone call that the burglars were coming to bring stolen property to him and that when they did arrive he knew that it was stolen property that was being brought to the flat. Alternatively, the Crown alleged that whether or not he knew before the suitcases were opened it was Btolen property, once one of the cases was opened it was and he must have known.
The appellant gave evidence. He described how the two men came to the flat and how Grey took out some of the silver and porcelain, but he, the appellant, was only interested in the silver and he had put other items on the table. Ornaments were put on the mantlepiece, but he was not interested in those either. He said that from the way that some of these articles were wrapped he concluded that this was not from a house clearance in the ordinary sense of that term, because it was clear that these people were not professionals in that particular sphere.
The accused Grey gave evidence on behalf of the appellant. Unfortunately, he cannot have done the appellant's case a great deal of good, because he said in the course of his evidence that the appellant had said immediately he saw the articles, "Those are not from a house clearance, I don't want to have anything to do with them". He repeated that in slightly different terms in the later course of his evidence. Indeed, Grey's evidence really was that the appellant had never taken any of the property into his possession, because he realised that they were stolen goods.
One would have thought that the evidence against the appellant was overwhelming, but now on his behalf Mr. Owen puts forward two submissions. The first is this. There was no clear direction by the learned judge as to what was meant by handling in this particular case. This was a case of handling by receiving and it required the learned judge to direct the jury as to what was meant by receiving. Mr. Owen's first complaint is this. The learned judge put forward during the course of his summing-up three propositions which, he contends, were propositions upon which the Jury should judge whether this appellant received the goods, that is took them into his or took them under his control. Those three propositions are to be found at pages 54 to 55 beginning at 54H of the summing-up.
We have considered each of those three propositions. It is clear, in our judgment, that the learned judge was there not referring to receiving or taking into possession or taking under control. What he was referring to was the time at which it was alleged that this appellant either knew or believed that he was dealing with stolen property. He starts (at page 54H) in this vein: "The Prosecution put this case in a number of ways for you to consider. What they are saying in the first place is that at the time of the telephone call this Defendant knew perfectly well that there had been a burglary and that those burglars were coming to his house with stolen goods in order to hand them over to him for him to get rid of them on behalf of the thieves and that he knew before they came to the house that they were bringing stolen goods to him. That, if you like, is proposition one." It is clear from its terms that that was a proposition which related to the time at which this appellant either knew or believed that stolen goods were in those suitcases.
It is true that when dealing with the second proposition he did mention the exercising of control, but again, in our judgment, the main purpose of these propositions was to deal with the matter of the timing of knowledge or belief.
Receiving and the associated question of control was dealt with earlier in the summing-up in an appropriate, clear and proper manner. At 54C the judge had this to say: "'Received', you must be satisfied that this Defendant did in fact receive those goods and, Members of the Jury, it is perfectly right to say that is term which in law has really a common-sense meaning but nonetheless you must be quite satisfied that this Defendant received the goods, in the sense that he was exercising some control over them." He goes to give an illustration which he had really taken from Mr. Owen's final speech to the jury. It was an attractive and vivid illustration of the encyclopaedia salesman who comes to the door and profers his wares for sale. In our judgment, in those passages the learned judge made clear and made clear in an accurate way what it was that the jury had to decide.
He came back to the issue again later in his summing-up; I quote (from page 61F): "The first is did this Defendant indeed receive those goods in the sense that I explained to you yesterday. Did he take them under his control, take possession of them and take them either entirely under his control or jointly with the thieves Grey and Biro? If you were to come to that conclusion, that what he was doing was not just sort of looking at what was being presented to him in the same way that the encyclopaedia salesman produces the books, but in fact he was taking control of those objects and putting them out in the room where they were found, then Members of the Jury it is up to you to decide whether or not he was indeed receiving those goods." In our judgment, that is accurate, it is not open to criticism and the first limb of the first submission made by Mr. Owen therefore fails.
Next he submits, again on this question of receiving, that there really was no or no...
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