Silence on Legal Advice: Clarity but Not Justice?: R v Beckles
| Author | Billal Malik |
| DOI | 10.1350/ijep.2005.9.3.211 |
| Published date | 01 July 2005 |
| Date | 01 July 2005 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
SILENCE ON LEGAL ADVICE: CLARITY BUT NOT JUSTICE?
Silence on legal advice: Clarity but not
justice?: R v Beckles
By Billal Malik*
LLM student, King’s College London
T he judgment of the Court of Appeal in R v Beckles (Keith Anderson)1 contains
important consideration of s. 34 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order
Act 1994, which permits inferences to be drawn from an accused’s failure
to mention in interview a fact later relied on at trial which, in the circumstances
existing at the time, the accused could reasonably have been expected to mention.
The appellant was convicted in 1997 of two counts of robbery, one count of false
imprisonment and one count of attempted murder. The prosecution case was that
the appellant along with two co-defendants robbed the victim and then threw him
out of a window. When the appellant was arrested his response was: ‘He wasn’t
pushed, he jumped, how is he?’. On being told of the victim’s injuries, he stated ‘I can
tell you everything, he jumped’. In his first police interview, the appellant refused to
answer questions because his solicitor had told him not to on the basis that, given
what he had ‘been told about the offence’, it wasn’t ‘reasonable’. In his second
interview several months later, the appellant did answer questions put to him. At
trial, the appellant’s evidence did not differ significantly from the account he had
given to the police at the second interview. The trial judge’s direction to the jury on
the issue of adverse inferences from the appellant’s silence under s. 34 of the Criminal
Justice and Public Order Act 1994 included the following:
[I]f simply saying, ‘Oh my solicitor advised me not to answer questions’
was by itself a good … answer, any competent solicitor and a defendant
would have the power to … make … a mockery of the Act … The fact is
that it is Beckles’ choice … whether or not to accept [his] solicitor’s
advice or not … If you thought the reason given was a good one, then of
course you would not hold it against them. If you thought that they
were failing to answer certain awkward questions because, for example,
they were keeping their powder dry, as it were, hoping against hope they
would not be identified … or because they had not yet worked out what
*
Email: billalmalik@hotmail.com.
1 [2004] EWCA Crim 2766, [2005] 1 All ER 705.
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EVIDENCE & PROOF
(2005) 9 E&P 211–216
211
CASE NOTES
their defence was going to be, you could draw the inference that I have
mentioned …
The appellant’s appeal (Beckles No. 1) was dismissed by the Court of Appeal, but in his
subsequent appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, it was held that there
had been a violation of his right to a fair trial under Article 6(1) of the European
Convention on Human Rights.2 The present appeal (hereafter Beckles...
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