Brown, R. v

A conviction entered following a guilty plea may nevertheless be unsafe where exceptional later-disclosed material shows that the prosecution case was fundamentally tainted and the basis of the plea has collapsed. The practical question is whether the material should have been disclosed and whether the prosecution would then have offered no evidence, so that the defendant would not have been placed in the position of deciding to plead guilty. A guilty plea does not preserve a conviction in those circumstances. The appellate court may quash the conviction under the safety jurisdiction in the Criminal Appeal Act 1968.

The appellant pleaded guilty at Leicester Crown Court in 1983 to his part in an armed post-office robbery and was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, with a consecutive term for breach of a suspended sentence.

After convictions of co-accused had been quashed following serious misconduct by officers of the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad, the Criminal Cases Review Commission referred his case. He alleged that access to a solicitor had been denied and that threats had induced his confession and plea. The Crown accepted that the principal evidence was tainted, that the confession was unreliable, and that, had the later material been known, the prosecution would have offered no evidence. The central issue was whether the guilty plea nevertheless left the conviction safe.

Decision

1. The appeal was allowed and the conviction was quashed.

2. The court accepted that, had the appellant been convicted after a trial, the conviction would necessarily have been unsafe. The evidence of the two principal prosecution witnesses was tainted. The confession was unreliable because of the improper denial of access to a solicitor and the probable misconduct of the interviewing officers. The evidence concerning the appellant’s motor car was too slight to sustain the case.

3. A guilty plea did not prevent the court from applying the safety jurisdiction in exceptional circumstances. The court treated R v Bhatti as illustrating that a plea may be fatally undermined where later-disclosed material destroys the reliability of evidence fundamental to the prosecution case.

4. Here, the Crown properly conceded that the later-known matters should have been disclosed before arraignment; that it would then have offered no evidence; and that it would likewise have offered no evidence had the matters emerged after the plea. It was therefore unthinkable that the prosecution would have continued or that the appellant would have been put to the decision whether to plead guilty. Those exceptional circumstances made the conviction unsafe within the Criminal Appeal Act 1968. It was unnecessary to resolve separately the factual allegations of duress or abuse of process.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): allowed the appeal and quashed the conviction: [2006] EWCA Crim 141.
• Criminal Cases Review Commission: referred the case after considering the effect of the guilty plea, alleged duress, and alleged abuse of process.
• Leicester Crown Court: before McCowan J, the appellant pleaded guilty in 1983 to the robbery count and was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, with nine months consecutive for breach of a suspended sentence.