R v Lamb
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE LAWTON |
| Judgment Date | 29 April 1980 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1980] EWCA Crim J0429-1 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) |
| Docket Number | No. 33/C/80 |
| Date | 29 April 1980 |
[1980] EWCA Crim J0429-1
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL
CRIMINAL DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Lord Justice Lawton
Lord Justice Dunn
and
Mrs. Justice Heilbron
No. 33/C/80
MR. B. HYTNER Q. C. and MR. A. CONRAD appeared on behalf of the Applicant.
MR. J. SHORROCK appeared on behalf of the Crown.
On 29th November, 1979 at Manchester Crown Court, after a trial before His Honour Judge Hardy this appellant, Peter David John Lamb, was convicted of wounding Vinod Bhatia with intent to do him grievous bodily harm. He was sentenced to two years imprisonment.
He has applied for an extension of time in which to appeal – he was four days out of time – and also for leave to appeal against his conviction. The Court has today granted the extension of time and given him leave to appeal against his conviction. His counsel has agreed that the hearing of the application should be treated as the hearing of the appeal.
The main question for this Court has been whether the visual identification of the appellant, by three young men, was sufficient to justify upholding this conviction.
The injured man, Bhatia, was a student at Manchester University. He had come up to the university a few days before 7th October, 1978. On that day, with two of his friends named Skinner and Gibbins, he had been to a dance organized for freshmen at the university. After the dance, in the early hours of the morning, they went to a cafe in Upper Brook Street, Manchester. They arrived at about 1.30 am. They sat down at a table and shortly after they had done so, three young men came in and sat at the adjoining table. These tables were very close to each other. Within a short time of sitting down, the three young men at the adjoining table started to be offensive to the three students. Inevitably the three students had a good look at the men who were being offensive to them. They did not like what was being said, so they very sensibly decided to leave the cafe.
They went out, leaving the other three men still sitting there. But as they walked away they appreciated that they were being followed by three men and all three students inferred that they were being followed by the three men who had been offensive to them in the cafe. The three men, in due course, caught up with the three students and attacked them.
It is probable that one of the three men attacked Bhatia with some kind of instrument like a chain. Bhatia was severely injured around the head and had to have a number of stitches in a scalp wound. The three students, badly shaken, decided they would not call the Police that night; but they went to the Police about ten hours later. They reported what had happened to them, giving descriptions of their assailants. One of the assailants was a tallish, well-built man, over six feet tall and he had been wearing a bright, tartan, lumber shirt. It was made up of checks which were predominently red and blue in color.
On 10th October, 1978 the three young men were asked to go to the Police Station. They were shown in turn, three albums of photographs of white men, who had been convicted in the past of crimes in the Manchester area. The photographs were all of the criminal record office type, that is to say, they were full-face and side-face views. There were about 900 photographs in the three volumes. The first person to be shown the photographs was Skinner. He picked out, as one of the assailants, a photograph of this appellant. He was then taken out of the room and Bhatia, who had been injured, was brought in.
Bhatia looked through the albums and was unable to identify anybody as having been one of the assailants. He too was taken out of the room and was not allowed to have contact with the third student, Gibbins. Gibbins was shown the three albums and he picked out the photograph of the appellant. The result was that two of the three students had picked out the same photograph as that of one of the assailants.
The appellant was arrested on 18th October, 1978. He was told that he was being arrested for the attack of Bhatia. He denied that he had been involved in any such attack and at once said that he had been elsewhere. He told the Police where he claimed to have been and he gave the Police the names and addresses of the persons with whom he said he had been. Those names included his friends, his mother and father and two relatives. He also, somewhat aggressively, suggested that he should be confronted with the man who said he had been one of the assailants. Skinner was available in the Police Station and he was brought into the room where the appellant was. He identified the appellant as being one of the assailants. In those circumstances, the Police decided that it would not be necessary to ask Skinner to attend an identification parade on which the appellant would be present. But they did decided to invite the appellant to attend an identification parade and he agreed to do so. Bhatia and Gibbins attended and both, with varying degrees of confidence, picked out the appellant as one of the assailants. The appellant was then charged with this offence. His home was searched. No shirt of the kind described by the three students was found.
In due course the appellant appeared before the Magistrates and those defending him decided that they would ask for a committal under section 2 of the Criminal Justice Act, 1967. As a result, the prosecution had to call all their evidence before the Magistrates. The lawyer who was prosecuting decided to put in as an exhibit the album of photographs which contained the photograph which had been picked out by Skinner and Gibbins. The Magistrates committed the appellant for trial.
At the trial, the Crown was represented by Mr. Shorrock of counsel and the defense were represented by Mr. Conrad. Mr. Shorrock had before him, of course, the depositions and the exhibits. He was of the opinion that it should be part of the prosecution's case to produce the album of photographs to the Jury and to show the Jury the photograph which had been picked out by Skinner and Gibbins. The reason he took this course was, so he told us, that it was part of the prosecution's case that there was a very striking coincidence that Skinner and Gibbins had both picked out the same photograph, from a total of 900.
Before the trial, Mr. Conrad did not make any suggestion to Mr. Shorrock that the album of photographs should not be produced and shown to the Jury, nor did he, at the stage when it was produced by one of the witnesses for the Crown, make any objection to its production. It was produced and shown to the Jury. The recollection of Mr. Shorrock was that the way in which it was done, was to hold up the album at the page containing the photograph of the appellant. It must have been clear to the Jury when they were shown it, what kind of photograph it was. It could not have been clearer to any intelligent member of the Jury, that it was a photograph which had been taken of someone who had been convicted of an offence. It had all the characteristics of such a photograph and all the other photographs on the same page were of the same kind. It was an album of photographs of local villains. That was the situation at the end of the prosecution's case.
During the course of the prosecution's case Mr. Conrad drew attention to what appeared to him to be irregularities in the way the identification had been carried out. He relied strongly upon the Home Office Circular which was sent to the Police Authorities in 1978. Home Office Circular number 109, rule one, was in these terms: "Photographs should not be shown if the circumstances allow a personal identification, for example, where there is already a suspect who is readily available to be asked to stand on an identification parade. Once a witness has made a positive identification from photographs, other...
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