Holliday, R v

A guilty plea does not prevent a conviction from being held unsafe. The circumstances in which an appellate court will go behind such a plea are exceptional, but the decisive question remains whether the conviction is unsafe.

Where reliable material establishes that another person committed the offence and the defendant’s admissions contain serious inaccuracies, a conviction based on those admissions and a guilty plea may be unsafe. The safety of each conviction must be assessed on its own evidence. A sentence for a remaining robbery must likewise be assessed independently after a related conviction has been set aside.

The appellant pleaded guilty at Bradford Crown Court to the Mirza Travel and Lunn Poly robberies. He received concurrent sentences of 12 years’ imprisonment, consecutive to a sentence already being served.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission referred the Mirza Travel conviction. It contended that the appellant’s confession and guilty plea were untrue. The appellant also sought an extension of time to challenge the Lunn Poly conviction, arguing that his unreliable admissions to the Mirza offence tainted that conviction. Alternatively, he sought a renewed appeal against sentence for the Lunn Poly robbery.

The central issues were whether the guilty plea rendered the Mirza Travel conviction unsafe, whether there was an arguable challenge to the Lunn Poly conviction, and the proper sentence for that robbery alone.

1. The appeal against the Mirza Travel conviction was allowed. A guilty plea did not preclude the court from considering whether the conviction was unsafe. Such intervention would be exceptional, but the ultimate question was the safety of the conviction.

2. The evidence of unsafety was overwhelming. Derek Elener had pleaded guilty to the Mirza Travel robbery and to other robberies committed by a similar method. Ballistic evidence linked the same weapon to five of them, while the appellant was imprisoned when four of those offences occurred. The appellant’s interview admissions also contained important inaccuracies. He failed to provide material details of the robbery and wrongly described others. The court therefore had no hesitation in finding the conviction unsafe.

3. The court had jurisdiction. The Criminal Cases Review Commission had properly referred the case under section 13 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1995. By section 9(2), the reference then proceeded as an appeal under section 1 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1968.

4. Permission to appeal the Lunn Poly conviction out of time was refused. Unlike the Mirza Travel offence, the conviction rested on identification evidence, the appellant’s possession of a Rolex bought for cash on the following day, and detailed admissions that could only have been known to the robber. There was no arguable basis for challenging its safety.

5. The renewed appeal against the Lunn Poly sentence was allowed. Twelve years was excessive for that robbery considered alone. A sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment was substituted.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): On a Criminal Cases Review Commission reference, the court allowed the appeal against the Mirza Travel conviction and found it unsafe. It refused permission to appeal the Lunn Poly conviction, but allowed the renewed sentence appeal and substituted 10 years’ imprisonment: [2005] EWCA Crim 2388.
• Crown Court at Bradford: On 18 October 1996 the appellant pleaded guilty to two robberies and received concurrent sentences of 12 years’ imprisonment, consecutive to a sentence already being served.