R v Mason (Carl)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE WATKINS |
| Judgment Date | 21 May 1987 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1987] EWCA Crim J0521-1 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) |
| Docket Number | No. 1776/E/87 |
| Date | 21 May 1987 |
[1987] EWCA Crim J0521-1
Lord Justice Watkins
Mr. Justice Mars-Jones
and
Mr. Justice Henry
No. 1776/E/87
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL
CRIMINAL DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
MR. C. KNOX appeared on behalf of the Appellant.
MR. R. LOWDEN appeared on behalf of the Crown.
On 26th February 1987 in the Crown Court at Newcastle-upon-Tyne before H.H. Judge Percy the appellant was convicted of arson and on 20th March sentenced for that to 2 years' youth custody. He appeals against conviction by way of a certificate from the trial judge. The point of law certified by him is thus stated: "A point of Jaw arose concerning the admissibility of evidence which it was submitted ought to have been excluded under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, sections 76 and 78."
It is as well we think to preface the remainder of this judgment by observing that upon the evidence this is an appeal without merit, but the point of law raised is one of real substance.
The facts are that on 1st July 1986 a motor car belonging to a Mr. Askew was set on fire. It was very badly damaged. The cost of repairing the damage was something in the region of £1000. It was obvious to those who later went on to inspect the damage that the fire had been caused by an inflammable liquid thrown against the car and ignited.
Before that incident there had been bad feeling between the appellant, who is 20 years of age, and Mr. Askew. Mr. Askew has a daughter who is 18 years of age. The appellant and this young lady had been going out together. She became pregnant by him. She was not willing to bear his child. She decided to have an abortion and she did. She also broke off her relationship with the appellant. He did not take that at all well. His erstwhile girlfriend's father and mother did not look upon what had happened with any great favour either; nor did they feel any pleasure in seeing the appellant any more. They began to receive midnight telephone calls. Upon each occasion they answered the telephone, whoever was at the other end put the receiver down. They suspected the appellant of making those calls. It may be that their suspicions were well-founded.
At two o'clock in the morning of 1st July 1986 Mr. Askew while in bed was woken up by a screech of tyres on the road outside his house. He thought no more of it then and went back to sleep, but a few minutes later he was again woken up, this time it was by a telephone call from a neighbour. As a result of that he ran to a window and saw that his motor car, which was parked outside, was on fire. There was nobody near the car. He had a foam fire extinguisher handy and with that he succeeded in putting out the fire. There were other parked cars nearby. If Mr. Askew had not succeeded in putting out the fire, it may well have been if the fire in his car had spread to the petrol tank that the petrol in it would have ignited and the fire spread to the other cars.
When the police came to the scene there was a lot of broken glass, as they discovered, about the place near the car. It was soon found that an inflammable liquid had been used, probably a combination of petrol and paint thinners. About twelve hours or so later the police paid a visit to the appellant. He denied having been involved in setting fire to the car. On 10th July he was arrested. Be it noted that upon arrest the police had in their possession no evidence at all to associate him with the cause of the fire. Before arrest one or more police officers decided to invent evidence and to acquaint the appellant of that so-called evidence as though it was genuinely possessed. What they decided to do was to tell the appellant that a fingerprint of his had been found in a very telling place. As to that Detective Constable Gunton said: "Detective Constable Walton and I set out deliberately to make the defendant believe we had a fingerprint on some of the glass fragments from the bottle that was used to perpetrate this crime. I agreed with the detective constable to this play-acting and it was a trick. The bottle, or the fragments of it, had not even been sent for fingerprint testing at that stage. We set about 'conning' the defendant. We had a suspicion, but only suspicion against him and we realised that we needed more proof……I felt the only way to get the truth from him was to do this."
Having been told by these police officers, falsely, that a fingerprint of his had been found on a fragment of glass from the bottle, the appellant saw his solicitor and told him his version of what had happened. The solicitor asked D.C. Gunton to confirm the fact, as the police were asserting, that they had found a fingerprint upon a fragment of glass at the scene of the crime. He confirmed to the solicitor that that was so. That was a deliberate falsehood. When giving evidence D.C. Gunton said as to this: "My motive…. was because if the defendant had had nothing to do with this glass bottle there was no way he would produce a confession. If he…knew very well he had handled …the bottle and been active in the preparation, of course, he would begin to doubt himself and whether or not he was going to be discovered."
The solicitor, influenced by what he had been told by the police as to the fingerprint, advised the appellant to answer their questions and to give his explanation of any involvement he had had in the incident. What he told the police as a...
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