R v Seymour (Edward)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE WATKINS,MR. JUSTICE STEPHEN BROWN |
| Judgment Date | 12 January 1983 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1983] EWCA Crim J0112-2 |
| Date | 12 January 1983 |
| Docket Number | No. 505/C1/82 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) |
[1983] EWCA Crim J0112-2
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL
CRIMINAL DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Lord Justice Watkins
Mr. Justice Lawson
and
Mr. Justice Stephen Brown
No. 505/C1/82
MR. M. CONNELL Q.C. and MR. J. CARTWRIGHT appeared on behalf of the Applicant.
MR. G. HAMILTON Q.C. and MR. C. SEAGROATT appeared on behalf of the Crown.
On 15th January, 1982 in the Crown Court at Northampton, before Bush J. and a jury, the Applicant who is years of age was convicted of manslaughter, sentenced to 5 years' imprisonment and disqualified from driving for 6 years. Additionally, a suspended sentence of 9 months' imprisonment imposed upon him on 13th November, 1980 for wounding and damaging property was activated but ordered to run concurrently with the 5 years' sentence.
The Applicant applies for leave to appeal against his conviction. The facts are these. For 16 months the Applicant lived at 4 Elizabeth Walk, Northampton, with a married woman named Mrs. Iris Burrows. At about midnight on 30th April, 1981, after both of them had been out drinking they quarrelled as they were walking home together. The Applicant thereupon decided to leave her, for that night anyway, and go to stay with his mother who lived at 113 Lindsay Avenue, Northampton. He was employed as a lorry driver at the time. His firm's lorry was parked outside Mrs. Burrow's home. In something of a temper he got into the lorry and drove off.
He owned a Vauxhall Victor motor car. Mrs. Burrows got into that and drove after him.
As the Applicant arrived in Lindsay Avenue and was driving around a traffic island in order to park just beyond it outside his mother's home, Mrs. Burrows also drove around the traffic island and into the path of the lorry. There was a slight collision of the two vehicles, both of which came to a standstill. Mrs. Burrows then backed off about four feet and alighted from the car through the passenger door.
She then stood alongside the front offside wheel of the lorry and started to talk to the Applicant. Being in no mood to continue any further discussion with her that night, he put his lorry into gear and drove it into the Vauxhall which he pushed out of the way. The car was in fact pushed a distance of between 10 to 20 feet with the result that one tyre was forced off and the wheel rim dug a sizeable pit in the roadway. Mrs. Burrows was crushed between the two vehicles and received such shocking and severe injuries that on the 6th May she died.
When interviewed by the police, the Applicant made a written statement in which he stated: "I was not aware of any traffic behind me at any time. As I had almost completed the journey round the island I became aware of a car right in front of me. I realised that it was my Vauxhall Victor and almost immediately it struck the front of the lorry. In that split second I slammed on my brakes by instinct. I was hardly moving anyway. I do not know which direction it had come from. The passenger door opened and Iris got out. She stood in the road by the side of my cab door, the offside cab door, shouting at me. She said "Don't you go anywhere tonight I have told the Police". I was already wound up and that made me mad. I accelerated and pushed my Victor across the road. The last I saw of Iris was her standing in the road by my offside cab door, shouting at me. I pushed the Victor across the road and drove off along Lindsay Avenue and down to the Wellingborough Road. After a couple of minutes I returned expecting to see Iris and to pick her up. I got back I saw Iris lying in the road with some people round. She looked dead. I thought it was connected with me but I couldn't see how."
The only offence with which the Applicant was charged upon the indictment was manslaughter which offence the Crown alleged was committed by the unlawful killing of Mrs. Burrows by the Applicant's reckless driving. It is nowadays and has been for many years unusual for manslaughter to be charged consequent upon an alleged killing by reckless driving. This is principally because ever since the enactment of section 8 of the Road Traffic Act 1956 there has existed by reason of that section and its successors in later legislation the statutory offence of causing death by the driving of a motor vehicle on a road recklessly, or at a speed or in a manner which is dangerous to the public with which offence prosecuting authorities have generaly chosen to charge one who when driving a motor vehicle has by driving recklessly killed another person. The most modern of the successors to section 8 is section 50 of the Criminal Law Act 1977, which is different in form in that it confines the statutory offence to causing death by driving a motor vehicle on a road recklessly, the maximum punishment for which is 5 years' imprisonment.
The Applicant, so Mr. Connell counsel for the Applicant told us, would have pleaded guilty to the section 50 offence had he been charged with it. He offered this plea to the prosecution before the Applicant's trial started but Mr. Hamilton, counsel for the prosecution, quite properly declined to advise acceptance of it preferring to receive a jury's verdict upon the charge of manslaughter. It is said that at that time many people were of the view that the common law offence of manslaughter based on killing by reckless driving no longer existed. It had been impliedly repealed by section 50 or its predecessors.
This opinion was soon to be exposed as ill founded, for in Government of the United States of America v. Jennings and Another (1982) 3 W.L.R. 450, the House of Lords held that the statutory offence had not had that effect and that, accordingly, the offence of manslaughter arising out of causing death by reckless driving was still an offence at common law. "No doubt," Lord Roskill said at page 460F, "prosecuting authorities today would only prosecute for manslaughter in the case of death caused by the reckless driving of a motor vehicle on a road in a very grave case."
So it is that two strikingly similar offences carrying different maximum penalties co-exist. This, it is contended, is a very unsatisfactory situation for which Parliament should provide a remedy. It cannot in any sense be right, and therefore just, that a discretion to charge a person who has killed by reckless driving either with manslaughter or with an offence against section 50 should be granted to the prosecution which it will be called upon to exercise according to the gravity with which it views the facts of the case. In any event, seeing that these two offences, the one being regarded as more serious than the other, do exist it cannot, so it is submitted, be right for a judge to give the same direction as to the meaning of the word "reckless" - the crucial issue to be tried usually turns on that in relation to both the common law and the statutory offence. He must by this direction, which is the only way he can achieve such a purpose, direct the jury that manslaughter is the graver of the two crimes.
Whilst in our view the co-existence of these two offences invite the criticisms levelled at it, this obviously cannot have any bearing upon this application. The two offences are lawfully in being and the prosecution can choose which of them it prefers to indict a person with. But the question of whether the direction on the crucial issue should differ as between the common law and the statutory offence is clearly a relevant matter and one which we are entitled to consider as a ground of appeal.
It is therefore to that we now turn, bearing in mind that the Judge in the present case is said to have failed to stress the gravity of the recklessness of the driving which would warrant a conviction for manslaughter and to contrast that with the statutory offence. He should have, but did not (so it is averred by the perfected ground of appeal) directed the jury that in the case of manslaughter founded upon a reckless act it must be proved that in the present case the Applicant drove the lorry when Mrs. Burrows was obviously and seriously at risk of being physically harmed, and knowing that there was some risk of that he had gone on to take it.
The Judge directed the jury in the following manner:
"The second question you have to decide: 'Was the driving that caused those injuries reckless?' If so, then it is manslaughter. If you are not satisfied that it was reckless, then the verdict is not guilty. To amount to reckless driving mere negligence is not enough. His conduct must go beyond the question of compensation between citizens and...
To continue reading
Request your trial
- R v Northavon District Council, ex parte Smith (pet. all.)
-
Brown (Uriah) v The Queen
...... defendants only with causing death by dangerous driving was adopted in England following the enactment of the Road Traffic Act 1956: see R v Seymour [1983] 2 AC 493 at 502, per Lord Roskill and cf R v Lawrence [1982] AC 510 at 523, per Lord Diplock. They must observe, however, that it may ......
-
R v Adomako
...Caldwell nor Lawrence directly affected the common law offence of manslaughter, that extension followed from the House of Lords' decision in Seymour 1983 2 AC 493. There it was decided that the ingredients of the two offences of causing death by reckless driving and motor manslaughter were......
-
R v Misra (Amit)
...[1982] AC 341, and R v Lawrence [1982] AC 510). The problem was further complicated by the later decision of the House of Lords in R v Seymour [1983] 2 AC 493, where the indictment charged manslaughter by reckless driving and it was said that recklessness in the sense described in Caldwell ......
-
The Law of Reckless Manslaughter — Swept by the Tide of Change?
...Ibid, at pp 796D and 813G.16 [1937] AC 576.17 Ibid. at p 583.18(1985) 82CrAppR 18.19(1985) 82 CrAppR, at p 23 (per Lord Roskill).20 (1983) 76 Cr App R 211. at p 216.305 JournalofCriminal Lawhad ceased to be a fashionable doctrine.Itis submittedthatthe decisionsofSeymour and Kong are binding......