Hagans & Anor, R v

A conviction is unsafe where the prosecution case depended substantially on a supergrass and police officers who were subsequently discredited, and the Crown cannot support the conviction. The court must assess the effect of the tainted evidence on the safety of the verdict. Separate supporting evidence does not preserve the conviction where the tainted material was the most important prosecution evidence and the court cannot conclude that the jury would necessarily have convicted without it.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission referred linked appeals by Christopher Hagans and John Michael Wilson. Both had been convicted at Leicester Crown Court in 1983 following related robbery proceedings. The prosecution relied heavily on evidence from Richard Mackay, a supergrass handled by officers of the West Midlands Police Serious Crime Squad, and, in Hagans’s case, alleged incriminating remarks attributed to him by those officers.

The Serious Crime Squad was later discredited and disbanded. Officers connected with the appellants’ cases had been found to have assaulted another defendant and to have given false evidence. The Crown did not seek to uphold either conviction. The central issue was whether the convictions could still be regarded as safe.

1. The appeals were allowed and the convictions were quashed. The court held that it was impossible to continue to regard Hagans’s convictions as safe. Important evidence against him came from Mackay and from Serious Crime Squad officers who had subsequently been discredited. The Crown made concessions and was not prepared to support the convictions.

2. The same conclusion applied to Wilson. Mackay’s evidence was of considerable importance at his trial. Mackay’s statement implicating Wilson had been witnessed by an officer later thoroughly discredited, and the Crown did not seek to sustain the conviction by evidence independent of Mackay and the suspect officers.

3. The existence of some evidence separate from the police officers’ evidence did not make Wilson’s conviction safe. Where the most important prosecution evidence was tainted, the court could not say that the jury must have convicted without Mackay’s evidence. The conviction therefore could not stand.

4. The court confirmed the orders made on 21 October 2003: Hagans’s convictions for conspiracy to rob, robbery and unlawful possession of a firearm, and Wilson’s conviction for conspiracy to rob, were quashed.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): On references by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, allowed the linked appeals and quashed the convictions: [2003] EWCA Crim 3358.
• Leicester Crown Court: Wilson was convicted of conspiracy to rob after a retrial in May 1983. Hagans was convicted in December 1983 of conspiracy to rob, robbery and unlawful possession of a firearm.
• Earlier appeal process: Each appellant’s application for leave to appeal was refused by both the single judge and the full court.