Recent Judicial Decisions
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X0107400309 |
| Published date | 01 January 2001 |
| Date | 01 January 2001 |
| Author | Rob R. Jerrard |
| Subject Matter | Recent Judicial Decisions |
ROB R. JERRARD
LegalCo"espondent
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Rob_Jerrard/
Policela.htm
RECENT JUDICIAL DECISIONS
Objective Justification Determines Lawfulness of Arrest
Hough vChiefConstable
of
Staffordshire Police House of Lords
(2001) The Times, 14 February
The statute
Section 24 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 provides:
(6) Where a constable has reasonable grounds for suspecting that
an arrestable offence has been committed, he may arrest without a
warrant anyone whom he has reasonable grounds for suspecting to
be guilty of an offence.
The facts
The claimant was a passenger in a car stopped by a police patrol car on
a motorway because of a damaged windscreen. A routine check on the
police computer revealed an entry concerning the owner of the car,
warning officers that the occupant might be armed with a firearm.
An armed response team was summoned and the claimant was
arrested, handcuffed, searched and taken to a police station. No weapon
was found on his person or in the vehicle.
Later the claimant was released from custody. He brought an action
for damages.
The law
Lord Justice Simon Brown said that having accepted that the arresting
officer genuinely suspected the claimant to be guilty of the unlawful
possession of a firearm, the judge turned to the critical question:
whether, considered objectively, reasonable grounds existed for the
constable's suspicion. The judge concluded that the burden of proof
went back to the stage of the officer who placed the entry on the police
national computer.
It
was the chief constable's central contention on the appeal that
the evidence of the officer who placed the information was in fact
immaterial: the only relevant information was that in the mind of the
arresting officer.
The judge was much influenced by an obiter dictum of Mr Justice
Forbes in Millington vCommissioner
of
Police
of
the Metropolis (The
Times, 28 May 1983 referred to in a footnote in Clayton and Tomlin-
son, Civil Actions Against the Police (2nd edn, 1992, 175-6).
The Police Journal, Volume 74 (2001) 251
It
was implicit in that approach that, depending on the circum-
stances of the arrest, what might be required to determine whether
reasonable grounds existed for suspicion was investigation not of what
was in the mind of the arresting officer but rather of what was in the
mind of some other officer who instructed or requested the first officer
to make the arrest or who provided the information which, reasonably
or otherwise, caused that officer to form a genuine suspicion and make
the arrest. That approach could not live with the House of Lords decision
in 0 'Hara vChief Constable
of
the Royal Ulster Constabulary (1997)
AC 286; PJ40 (3), 275, in which it was held that the only relevant
matters were those present in the mind of the arresting officer.
(In O'Hara it was held that in order to determine whether reason-
able grounds for the suspicion to justify arrest without warrant existed
under s. 12(1)(b) of the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Pro-
visions) Act 1984, the test related to what was in the arresting officer's
mind when he effected the arrest because he must have formed a
genuine suspicion that the person being arrested had been concerned in
acts of terrorism.
It had also to be shown that there had been reasonable grounds for
forming such a suspicion. The basis of that suspicion was not neces-
sarily the officer's own observations. He could have formed the
suspicion from the information he received, whether true or false, and a
reasonable man, having regard to all the surrounding circumstances,
would also regard that suspicion as reasonable.
Instructions by a superior officer to arrest, without more, was
insufficient to afford a ground for reasonable suspicion. The arresting
officer should be given some basis for such instructions, for example, a
report from an informer.)
O'Hara was decided after Clayton and Tomlinson wrote their book.
It
was, however, decided three years before judgment in the present
case and it was a matter of surprise and regret that it was not brought to
the judge's attention.
Both parties had been represented by counsel although not counsel
acting in the appeal.
The principle established, although on consideration of a different
question, necessarily extended to encompass a case like the present.
The critical question to be asked in all cases was what was in the
mind of the arresting officer: he could never be a mere conduit for
someone else.
It
was for that reason insufficient for an arresting officer
to rely solely upon an instruction to carry out the arrest. Conversely,
however, where the arresting officer's suspicion was formed on the
basis of a police national computer entry, that entry was likely to
provide the necessary objective justification. After all, if, as the
authorities clearly established, information from an informer or mem-
ber of the public could properly found suspicion for an arrest, why too
should not an apparently appropriate entry in the computer? That was
not to say that any computer entry would of itself necessarily justify an
arrest.
If
there was no urgency in the situation and if in the light of the
252 The Police Journal, Volume 74 (2001)
To continue reading
Request your trial