Guney, R v

Where subsequent inquiries cast substantial doubt on the integrity of police officers who supplied intelligence leading to a search, a conviction is unsafe if the information would probably have required disclosure and the prosecution would then have offered no evidence to protect its sources. The same result follows where disclosure would have materially altered the trial so that the appellate court cannot be confident that its outcome would have been unchanged.

The court may give curtailed reasons for allowing an appeal where fuller reasons would endanger persons or compromise the public interest. It must nevertheless provide as much explanation as is consistent with that protection.

The appellant was convicted at Snaresbrook Crown Court in 1996 of possessing a firearm and ammunition without certificates, and possessing heroin with intent to supply. The drugs, firearm, ammunition and cash had been found at his home following a police search based on intelligence.

An earlier appeal against conviction was dismissed in 1998. The Criminal Cases Review Commission later referred the convictions after inquiries concerning the intelligence report that had led to the search. The appellant's lawyers could not see all the sensitive material, but the Crown, having seen it, accepted that it could no longer contend that the convictions were safe.

The central issue was whether the subsequently discovered information made the convictions unsafe, and how far the court could explain its reasons without endangering sources.

1. Appeal allowed. The court agreed with the Crown that the convictions could no longer be regarded as safe.

2. Subsequent inquiries had cast substantial doubt on the integrity of former police officers who had played an important part in gathering the intelligence underlying the report of 28 September 1995. That information had not been available to the trial judge.

3. Had it then been available, it would have been placed before the judge if the Crown intended to proceed. Disclosure would inevitably have been ordered. To protect intelligence sources, the Crown would then have offered no evidence.

4. Alternatively, if the Crown had disclosed the material and proceeded, the trial would have taken such a different course that the court could not be confident that the result would have been the same. The earlier dismissal of the appeal remained unimpugned on the information then available.

5. The court gave limited public reasons because the grounds for allowing the appeal remained sensitive. It accepted that protection of those who might be endangered justified curtailing the judgment, while giving the appellant and the public as full an explanation as the public interest permitted.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): In [2003] EWCA Crim 1502, the court allowed the appeal after a Criminal Cases Review Commission referral because the convictions were unsafe.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): An earlier appeal against conviction was dismissed on 27 February 1998, on the information then available.

• Crown Court at Snaresbrook: The appellant was convicted on 23 July 1996 and received a total sentence of 14 years' imprisonment.