R v Nicholson (Heather Shirley)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE AULD |
| Judgment Date | 15 May 2006 |
| Neutral Citation | [2006] EWCA Crim 1518 |
| Docket Number | No. 2006/01055/B3 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) |
| Date | 15 May 2006 |
[2006] EWCA Crim 1518
Lord Justice Auld
Mr Justice Gibbs and
Sir Michael Wright
No. 2006/01055/B3
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL CRIMINAL DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
The Strand
London
WC2A 2LL
MISS DANIELLE COOPER appeared on behalf of THE APPELLANT
MR RICHARD STILLWELL appeared on behalf of THE CROWN
On 2 February 2006, in the Crown Court at Oxford, before His Honour Judge Corrie, the appellant, Heather Shirley Nicholson, following a ruling by the judge, pleaded guilty to a charge of having breached an Anti-Social Behaviour Order. The judge sentenced her to four months' imprisonment and ordered that 29 days spent on remand should count towards that sentence. Miss Nicholson appeals against conviction on her plea of guilty by leave of the single judge.
The facts giving rise to the charge and her plea of guilty may be stated shortly. She was and is a committed animal rights campaigner, having been involved in campaigns against Huntingdon Life Sciences and companies connected with its work.
On 17 January 2005, the Peterborough Magistrates made her the subject of an Anti-Social Behaviour Order, prohibiting her for a period of not less than two years or until further order from going within 500 metres of a number of premises (five) scheduled to the order. One of them was the premises of a proposed primate testing laboratory at Oxford University —a project that had no links to or association with Huntingdon Life Sciences. The premises were known, and so named in the schedule to the order, as Halifax House, South Parks Road, Oxford.
On 19 May 2005, Miss Nicholson was present at a demonstration sanctioned by an order of the High Court within 500 metres of Halifax House, thereby breaching the order unless she had "a reasonable excuse" as provided by section 1(10) of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. It had been Miss Nicholson's intention to plead not guilty. She did plead not guilty at a plea and directions hearing. By the time the matter came before Judge Corrie for trial she had served a defence statement repeating what she had said in a police interview. In that interview she had admitted that she had attended the demonstration and that it had taken place within 500 metres of Halifax House. She admitted, too, that she had not carefully checked the terms of the order, in particular the scheduled inclusion in it of premises named Halifax House. However, she maintained that she had a reasonable excuse for breaching the terms of the order within the statutory provision because she had no recollection of ever having heard before, or at the demonstration, of any reference to Halifax House as the address of the proposed laboratory, and she had mistakenly believed that she was entitled to attend the demonstration as she did.
When the matter came before the judge, counsel for the Crown, Mr Richard Stillwell, sought a preliminary ruling as to whether the proposed defence of Miss Nicholson was capable of being a defence in law to the charged breach of the order, that is capable of constituting, in the words of the statute, a "reasonable excuse".
After hearing submissions from Mr Stillwell and from Miss Danielle Cooper for the defence, and after considering authorities to which we shall come, the judge ruled that it was an offence of "strict liability" and that the qualification of "without reasonable excuse" should be narrowly construed so as to exclude ignorance or forgetfulness and, seemingly, misunderstanding of its clear terms. By implication he indicated that that was how he would direct the jury if Miss Nicholson were to persist with that defence. In the light of that ruling, which if correct left her with no legal escape from a verdict of guilty even if the jury accepted her account, she changed her plea to guilty and the judge sentenced her as we have indicated. Miss Nicholson now seeks to unseat that conviction, notwithstanding her plea of guilty.
Miss Cooper, who appears for Miss Nicholson on the appeal, has ably and succinctly submitted that the judge wrongly ruled that ignorance or forgetfulness, or misunderstanding by the subject of an Anti-Social Behaviour Order of its clear terms is not capable of amounting to a reasonable excuse within section 1(10). She submitted that, whether or not on Miss Nicholson's account she had a reasonable excuse was a matter for a jury, and that it should have been left to them. In her submissions to the court, Miss Cooper has accepted that, subject to the "without reasonable excuse" defence, Miss Nicholson was in breach of the Anti-Social Behaviour Order, and that she had not, before attending the demonstration, properly apprised herself of its terms. However, Miss Cooper submitted that, on the facts that she would have advanced in her defence, if not discouraged by the judge's ruling, a jury could have found that she had a reasonable excuse. In short, she submitted that the words "without reasonable excuse" in this context should be given their ordinary meaning, and that the judge should have left it to the jury to determine whether on the evidence there was such excuse. In so submitting, Miss Cooper commented that the effect of the judge's reasoning was that ignorance or forgetfulness or misunderstanding of the terms of an Anti-Social Behaviour Order could never amount to a reasonable excuse. That proposition, she argued, must be wrong.
Mr Stillwell, who appears again for the Crown on the appeal, in equally succinct and helpful arguments to the court, submitted, as he did to the judge, that the offence is one of "strict liability", that it is for the subject of such an order to familiarise himself with its terms and effect, and that if he fails to do so, giving rise to a breach of it, his ignorance of the law is no excuse. He referred to ignorance of the law rather than ignorance of the material facts because he characterised an Anti-Social Behaviour Order as one that extends the law in respect of the individual covered by it. Put another way, his submission was that the order in barring Miss Nicholson from entering areas in the vicinity of Halifax House in Oxford, and of other premises, created legal prohibitions particular to her.
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AG Ref No. 1 of 2022
...acted under duress ( R v. Bianco [2001] EWCA Crim 2516 at [15]); that the defendant might have a “reasonable excuse” ( R v. Nicholson [2006] 1 WLR 2857 at [9]; R v. G [2010] 1 AC 43, 87D); or loss of self-control ( R v. Martin [2017] EWCA Crim 1359 at 119 The context of these issues is a......
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R v Farah Damji
...EWCA Crim 3102 at [21]. 42 It is common ground that s.5(5) does not create a strict liability offence as such. In R v Nicholson [2006] EWCA Crim 1518 at [19] the court noted that it may not be helpful to characterise an offence as one of strict liability where the prosecution does not have......
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R v G; R v J
...R 239, CAR v Malik (Samina Hussain) [2008] EWCA Crim 1450, CAR v Misra [2004] EWCA Crim 2375; [2005] 1 Cr App R 328, CAR v Nicholson [2006] EWCA Crim 1518; [2006] 1 WLR 2857; [2006] 2 Cr App R 429, CAR v Nova Scotia Pharmaceutical Society [1992] 2 SCR 606R v Quayle [2005] EWCA Crim 1415; [2......
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B v DPP
...of an ASBO without a reasonable excuse for doing so. 10 The Crown referred us to the decision of the Court of Appeal Criminal Division in R v Nicholson [2006] 1 WLR 285. An animal rights protestor had been made subject to an ASBO prohibiting her from going within 500 metres of various place......