COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE CROWN COURT AT NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE
MRS JUSTICE SMITH
T980055
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL |
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B e f o r e :
MRS JUSTICE SLADE
and
MRS JUSTICE SHARP
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JOHN CHRISTOPHER EARLE |
Appellant |
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- and - |
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THE QUEEN |
Respondent |
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Paul K. Sloan Q.C. for the Crown
Hearing date : 13 January 2011
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Crown Copyright ©
Lord Justice Leveson :
The Issue
The Evidence
"… she is a woman of bad character. She steals from shops. She has a number of convictions for that and she has accepted that she had stolen many, many more times than the occasions on which she has been caught. She admits that certainly last year she had a drink problem. She says that she drinks less now but certainly then she was drinking a great deal and admits that she can be aggressive in drink … she agreed that she has led a completely disorganised and chaotic life. … So there you have a picture of a not very satisfactory personality.
… not only are those generally unsatisfactory features about her, but there is plainly a particular reason that I must warn you about as to why her evidence could be unreliable. She may have an interest in persuading you that Earle is guilty of this murder because as you will well realise if he is not, the finger of suspicion is pointing directly at her."
"in your deliberations you must give very careful consideration to her evidence to see whether you can rely upon it as being essentially truthful, … you must scrutinise her evidence with great care … you must exercise great care before you can rely upon her evidence."
The First Appeal
"Having carefully considered the whole of this summing up … we do not regard it as arguable … that this judge's warnings were inadequate. On the contrary, it seems to us that she said everything that could properly be said, in order to emphasise to the jury the need to approach with, in her words, "great care" the evidence of Shirley Waddington.
In our judgment, Mr Knox was correct to characterise this summing up as being prima facie coherent, well constructed and impeccable. It also, at the end of detailed scrutiny, satisfies that description."
The New Evidence
Analysis
"A substantial miscarriage of justice will actually occur if fresh, admissible and apparently credible evidence is admitted which the jury convicting a defendant had no opportunity to consider but which might have led it, acting reasonably, to reach a different verdict if it had had the opportunity to consider it. … It is … the duty of the criminal appellate courts to seek to identify and rectify convictions which may be unjust. That result will occur where a defendant is convicted and further post-trial evidence raises a reasonable doubt whether he would or should have been convicted had that evidence been before a jury."
"[T]he Crown have said that it has not been shown who the blood belongs to. It certainly has not been shown that it was [the deceased's]. She [Shirley Waddington] did, however, tell you at one stage that she was not wearing her white trainers on that day, although both the [appellant] and Rachel Fox say that she was. The defence suggest to you that there she is, trying to excuse the blood on her boots and suggest that it has nothing to do with the events of that day. A matter for you to consider."
"… [S]he handed over a pair of jeans which she said were the ones she had been wearing on 2 August and you may think it looks as though she was lying about that. … The defence say that it is significant that there was no blood on those jeans and they suggest that there she was seeking to give the police a pair of jeans which she knew would have no blood on them that would be detected."
Conclusion