Stubbs,R. v

A witness may be qualified to give expert evidence through practical experience of a specialised computer system, even without wider information-technology qualifications. The admissibility question is whether the subject permits expert evidence and whether the witness has sufficient knowledge, gained by study or experience, to give valuable assistance.

Limitations in that knowledge, and the witness’s employment by the victim of the alleged fraud, ordinarily affect the weight of the evidence rather than its admissibility. Those matters are for the jury, provided the judge has properly ruled on admissibility and directs the jury on its role in assessing reliability.

The appellant was convicted at Isleworth Crown Court of conspiracy to defraud and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. The Crown alleged that, while employed by HSBC as a password-reset clerk, he reset a corporate customer’s password so that others could fraudulently transfer approximately £11.8 million from its account.

A substantial part of the Crown case concerned activity reports from HSBC’s Hexagon online-banking system. Mr Roddy, an HSBC employee with practical experience of the system, interpreted those reports. The trial judge admitted his evidence as expert evidence.

On appeal, the appellant challenged that ruling, the refusal of a submission of no case to answer, the jury directions concerning expert evidence, and the safety of the conviction. The central issue was whether Mr Roddy’s experience and employment rendered his evidence inadmissible.

1. Appeal dismissed. Richards LJ, delivering the court’s judgment, held that the trial judge was entitled to admit Mr Roddy’s evidence and that the conviction was safe.

2. Applying R v Bonython [1984] SASR 45, the admissibility of expert opinion required the judge to decide whether the subject was suitable for expert evidence and whether the witness had acquired sufficient knowledge by study or experience to give valuable assistance. The operation of the Hexagon system was a proper subject for expert evidence. Mr Roddy’s practical training and experience in supporting and managing that system were sufficient to permit him to interpret the activity data, notwithstanding that he was neither a programmer nor a general IT specialist.

3. The limitations of Mr Roddy’s technical knowledge did not make his evidence inadmissible. They were fully exposed in cross-examination, including his concession that session-reference numbers could be reallocated and could not by themselves identify one operator at one workstation. Those matters were for the jury when deciding whether to accept his evidence and what weight to give it.

4. Mr Roddy’s employment by HSBC, the victim of the fraud, did not disqualify him as an expert. Expertise and independence were separate issues. In the absence of a basis for finding conscious bias, any conscious or unconscious lack of objectivity went to reliability and weight, not admissibility. The court followed R v Gokal on that point.

5. Once the evidence was admissible, it was capable of providing a proper framework for the remaining Crown evidence. Taken as a whole, that evidence plainly raised a case to answer. The summing up did not transfer the judicial admissibility decision to the jury: read as a whole, it made clear that Mr Roddy had been admitted as an expert and that the jury alone assessed acceptance and weight.

6. There was a solid evidential basis for the jury’s verdict. The appellant’s alternative account, his recorded return to the workplace, the password authorisations, and the absence of supporting documentation were matters for the jury. The court had no lurking doubt warranting interference.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) The appeal against conviction was dismissed on 27 July 2006; written reasons were given in [2006] EWCA Crim 2312.

• Isleworth Crown Court The appellant was convicted by a jury of conspiracy to defraud on 25 July 2005 and was subsequently sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.