James, R v

A detained suspect’s statutory right to legal advice under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 may be delayed only on the strict conditions in section 58. The police must have reasonable grounds to believe that access to a solicitor will cause one of the specified harms. A mere concern that it might do so is insufficient.

Where admissions obtained after a clear breach of that right ought to have been excluded, and their exclusion leaves no case fit to go to the jury, the resulting conviction is unsafe and must be quashed.

R v James concerned convictions for murder and conspiracy to rob at Reading Crown Court in 1986. The prosecution alleged that the appellant had joined a plan to rob the victim’s family, supplied information and a shotgun, and made admissions during police interviews.

The appellant had repeatedly been refused access to a solicitor after his second arrest. His admissions were important both to the prosecution case and as corroboration of evidence from co-accused. Following a Criminal Cases Review Commission referral, the appeal raised whether the admissions should have been excluded under sections 76 or 78 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, and whether the convictions were therefore unsafe.

1. The appeal was allowed and the convictions were quashed. Lord Justice Waller delivered the court’s judgment. The Crown properly conceded that the denial of legal advice was a breach of section 58 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 of such seriousness that the interviews should have been excluded.

2. Section 58 confers an important right to legal advice. Its limited power to delay access required reasonable grounds for believing that allowing access will cause one of the specified harms. It was not enough that access might hinder the investigation. The police had applied that weaker test.

3. There could have been no proper belief that permitting the appellant to consult Mr Wroe would alert unarrested suspects, since the other suspects had been arrested. Nor was there a proper basis for believing that access to a solicitor would hinder recovery of the gun. The refusal was therefore a clear breach of section 58, consistently with the approach in R v Samuel (1988) 87 Cr App R 232.

4. Had exclusion been sought at trial, the court was satisfied that the admissions and confessions would have been excluded. Without them, there was no case capable of going to the jury implicating the appellant in the conspiracy. The appropriate course would have been a direction to acquit; the convictions were consequently unsafe.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division)—following a Criminal Cases Review Commission referral, allowed the appeal and quashed the convictions: [2004] EWCA Crim 1433.
• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division)—refused the renewed application for leave to appeal on 6 December 1999.
• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division)—the single judge refused leave to appeal; the date is not stated in the judgment.
• Reading Crown Court—on 16 October 1986, convicted the appellant of murder and conspiracy to rob and imposed life imprisonment for murder with a concurrent 15-year sentence for conspiracy.