Jamieson & Anor, R. v

A defendant is entitled to adduce evidence relevant to the defence, even where it prejudices a co-defendant. Section 78 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 does not give the court power to exclude such defence evidence. An accomplice’s later voluntary evidence is not tainted merely because an earlier confession might have been inadmissible against that accomplice. A document tendered as real evidence, rather than for the truth of its contents, requires a sufficient evidential link to its alleged source. A conviction nevertheless remains safe where trial errors could not have affected the verdict in light of the evidence as a whole.

The appellants were convicted jointly at Bury St Edmunds Crown Court of robbing an elderly man at his isolated cottage and were each sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment. The prosecution relied on evidence from an accomplice who had pleaded guilty, substantial circumstantial evidence, and, in Hobden’s case, identification evidence and a shoe print.

Jamieson challenged the admission of the accomplice’s evidence and the restriction of cross-examination about other robberies in Sussex. Hobden challenged, among other matters, the exclusion of a note said to have been passed by Jamieson, identification evidence, the conduct of the joint trial, and the refusal to sever. The central questions were whether the rulings were erroneous and, if so, whether either conviction was unsafe.

1. The appeals were dismissed. Hobden’s renewed applications for leave to appeal on his remaining grounds were refused.
2. The court upheld the refusal to exclude the accomplice’s evidence. Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 section 76 concerns a confession admitted against its maker. The reasoning in R v McGovern [1990] 92 Cr App R 228 did not make the witness’s later trial evidence tainted. The witness statement was made more than eight months after the unrecorded car conversation, after legal advice and guilty pleas. Its voluntariness and weight were matters for the jury, which had received a strong accomplice warning.
3. The judge did err by restricting Jamieson’s cross-examination of the prosecution witness about the Sussex robberies. A defendant may elicit relevant defence evidence from a prosecution witness even if it prejudices a co-defendant. Section 78 applies to prosecution evidence, not defence evidence. The court applied the relevance principle stated in R v Myers [1998] AC 124. Hobden had also given evidence against Jamieson, so section 1(f)(iii) of the Criminal Evidence Act 1898 provided a further basis for relevant cross-examination of him.
4. The note was admissible as real evidence. It was not tendered for the truth of its contents, so strict proof of authorship was unnecessary. Hobden’s evidence that Jamieson handed it to him, together with its contents, supplied a sufficient link to Jamieson. Its exclusion did not affect safety because it would have harmed, rather than assisted, Hobden’s case.
5. The identification complaints, the complaint about post-robbery sightings, and the severance complaints disclosed no unfairness affecting the verdicts. The evidence against Hobden was overwhelming. The evidence against Jamieson was also damning notwithstanding the erroneous restriction on cross-examination. The convictions were therefore entirely safe, and the joint trial properly remained undivided.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) Dismissed both appeals against conviction and refused Hobden’s renewed applications for leave to appeal on additional grounds.
• Bury St Edmunds Crown Court HHJ Beddard and a jury convicted both appellants of robbery on 4 April 2001 and sentenced each to ten years’ imprisonment.