R v Tandy
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE WATKINS |
| Judgment Date | 21 December 1987 |
| Neutral Citation | [1987] EWCA Crim J1221-38 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1987] EWCA Crim J1221-3 |
| Docket Number | No. 1067/G2/87 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) |
| Date | 21 December 1987 |
[1987] EWCA Crim J1221-3
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL
CRIMINAL DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Lord Justice Watkins
Mr. Justice Rose
and
Mr. Justice Roch
No. 1067/G2/87
MR. J. STEWART, Q.C. and MR. TA. BAYLISS appeared on behalf of the Appellant.
MR. R. SMITH, Q.C. and MISS A. ADDLEMAN appeared on behalf of the Crown.
The appellant was convicted of the murder of her 11-year old daughter, Amanda, at the Leeds Crown Court on 29th January 1987 in a trial before Mr. Justice Kennedy and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The appellant, to whom the single Judge gave leave to appeal against conviction, did not at the trial dispute that she had caused Amanda's death on Wednesday, 5th March 1986, in a bedroom. at the home of the appellant and her second husband, Martin Tandy. Amanda and her brother were the children of the first marriage. Death was caused by strangulation With a scarf; the act of strangulation took place at approximately 8 p.m. Death followed at 9.30 the following morning after Amanda had been admitted to hospital. She did not at any time recover consciousness.
The evidence at the trial indicated that the relationship between the appellant and her daughter Was a good one; that they Were like sisters.
On 5th March the appellant telephoned the police at 5.45 p.m., because Amanda, according to her, had not returned home at the expected time. She searched for her, she said, but could not find her. That call Was tape recorded by the police, to whom the appellant sounded as though she had been drinking.
At 6.45 p.m. a Woman Police Constable Went to the appellant's home. By this time Amanda had returned, had gone to her bedroom and Was refusing to leave it. The constable saw Amanda there. She maintained that the appellant had known where she was. The constable reported that the appellant looked and smelled as though she had been drinking; She Was dirty, unkempt, nervous and shaking.
After the constable had left the house at about 7.50 p.m., the appellant went to speak to Amanda in her bedroom. Martin Tandy Was still in the house at that time. Whilst the appellant was speaking to Amanda he left.
Amanda told her mother that she Wanted to go and live With her grandmother. When asked why, she said that she had been sexually interfered with but she would not name the person responsible. The appellant asked Amanda whether it Was her step-father who had been interfering with her. The appellant's evidence as to that Was, "I said to the child on the bed, is it that bastard just gone out? And then after a long while there was a scream and that was it. I thought that she meant that Martin had been at her. I just saw her there in the bed blue and lifeless. That was when I Went to the neighbours. I accept that I must have been responsible, but I have no recollection of having killed her. I don't know where the scarf came from or anything. I don't remember what I said to the police or Mrs. Hemmingway. I remember the ambulance going and I remember going to the police station and being arrested."
In fact, having strangled her daughter, the appellant vent to a neighbour and asked her to go to the appellant's house, because she, the appellant, thought Amanda Was dead. Later the appellant claimed that Amanda had tried to kill herself.
A post mortem performed on the Thursday afternoon showed that Amanda's death had been caused by the application of a ligature for tens of seconds. It also revealed that she had been sexually abused over a period of weeks or months in that there was dilation of the anus consistent only with a number of acts of intercourse per anum; in the pathologist's view, more than twelve such acts. In addition Amanda's pubic hairs had been shaved.
Evidence at the trial established that it was not the appellant who had interfered with Amanda. The appellant claimed – there Was no evidence to contradict this – that until the Wednesday evening she had had no idea that her daughter was being sexually abused.
At the trial the appellant's intention at the time of the killing was put in issue. No complaint has been raised in regard to the learned trial Judge's directions to the jury upon the requisite intent for murder and no ground of appeal arises out of this issue.
The second issue raised at the trial Was the defence of diminished responsibility under section 2(1) of the Homicide Act 1957.
It was raised in this Way: the appellant Was at all material times an alcoholic. According to her first husband she had by 1980 been in that condition. Her own evidence was that she had been drinking heavily for a number of years, her drinking being due to loneliness and two unhappy marriages.
She told the doctors who examined her, and the Jury, that she normally drank either Barley Wine or Cinzano, but that on Monday, 3rd March, she had purchased a bottle of vodka. She had not opened this until the morning of the Wednesday, but having opened and started the bottle of vodka, she had consumed 9/10ths of it during the course of that day. She had had her last drink at about 6.30 p.m. She had not previously drunk vodka.
Vodka contains more alcohol than Cinzano Which the appellant said she had drunk on Monday the 3rd She could not recall whether or not she had had a drink on the Tuesday.
Forensic evidence showed that her blood alcohol level at midnight on Wednesday 5th March, When a sample of blood was taken from her by Dr. Stoker, was 240 mgs. of alcohol per 100 mls. of blood. The opinion of Dr. Wood, a Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist called by the defence, was that at the time of the act of strangulation the level of alcohol in the appellant's blood would have been not less than 330 mgs. of alcohol per 100 mls. of blood and could have been anything up to 400 mgs. of alcohol per 100 mls. of blood.
Dr. Lawson, who gave evidence for the Crown, said that in his view the appellant's blood at the time of the strangulation Would have contained approximately 300 mgs. of alcohol per 100 mls. of blood. The medical evidence indicated that this level of alcohol would be a lethal intake of intoxicants for a normal person, but that alcoholics, because of their persistent abuse of alcohol, become able to tolerate such levels of alcohol in their blood streams and to dissipate alcohol from their blood streams more quickly than non-alcoholics are able to.
Indeed in this case the evidence of Dr. Stoker, who examined the appellant when at midnight he obtained the sample of blood from her, was that her movements were coordinated, her speech was all right and the appellant displayed no clinical evidence of intoxication. Dr. Stoker had observed her walking up two flights of stairs.
There were three principal areas of conflict between the medical witnesses called at the trial on behalf of the appellant and the medical witness called by the Crown. The first was as to whether alcoholism is or is not a disease. Dr. Wood and Dr. Milne (a Consultant Psychiatrist) both expressed the view that alcohol dependence syndrome, or alcoholism in the severity manifested in the appellant's case, constituted a disease. Dr. Lawson, who accepted that the appellant was an alcoholic, expressed the opinion that alcoholism, even chronic alcoholism, is not a disease.
In. summing up the Judge told the jury with regard to that (page 36B): "…. it is totally unnecessary for you to involve yourselves in. that medical controversy about labelling. You have to apply the words of the Act of Parliament in a common sense way and those words are reflected in the wording on that sheet before you."(Here the Judge was referring to a document headed, "Questions for the jury" which he had prepared and provided to the jury). "If you find that a woman is suffering from an abnormality of mind in the form of grossly impaired judgment and emotional responses and if you find that she is so suffering as a direct result of a condition over which she has – and I emphasise the words – no immediate control, then you can say that the second element in. this defence is proved because her abnormality of mind is induced by disease or injury."
The Judge was there telling the jury that the issue they had to decide was not whether alcoholism is or is not a disease, but whether the appellant was suffering from an abnormality of mind, in the form of grossly impaired judgment and emotional responses, as a direct result of her alcoholism, or whether, as the Crown on the evidence of Dr. Lawson contended, her abnormal state of mind at the moment of the act of strangulation was due to the fact that she was drunk on vodka.
The second area of conflict between the doctors was whether the appellant's drinking on the Wednesday Was voluntary or involuntary.
Dr. Wood said of this that he thought it Would have been very difficult for her to resist the temptation of drink on that day. She Was under some pressure to continue drinking to stave off the shakiness and other symptoms of withdrawal affecting her. He also said he would argue that drinking to that extent (that is to say most of a bottle of vodka) was an inherent part of the disease. He considered that compulsion Was certainly partly causative of her drinking as she did on that day in that the choice to do so was not a free choice. Compulsion stemmed from her being an alcoholic and her experience that to deny herself drink would lead her to being severely uncomfortable, if not ill. When asked if the appellant in his view at that time bad control over her drinking habits, he replied, "No none whatsoever".
Dr. Milne said that he the appellant drank involuntarily, because she was an alcoholic.
Dr. Lawson...
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