Nolan, R v

The safety of a historic conviction must be assessed by current standards of fairness and in the light of all admitted fresh evidence. Where a vulnerable suspect was repeatedly interviewed without legal assistance, the records were incomplete, admissions were retracted and aspects of the account conflicted with known facts, cogent expert evidence of susceptibility to a false confession may render the conviction unsafe. The appellate court must ask whether it can be sure that the jury would have convicted if it had heard the fresh evidence. A warning that was adequate at trial does not cure the resulting doubt where expert evidence would materially alter the assessment of confession reliability.

The appellant was convicted of murder at Nottingham Crown Court in 1982 and sentenced to life imprisonment. His appeal against conviction was dismissed in 1984.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission referred the conviction under section 9 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1995. The prosecution case had depended entirely on admissions made by the 19-year-old appellant during police interviews and in a written statement. He later maintained that the admissions were false and induced by oppressive questioning.

The court admitted fresh psychological evidence that the appellant was vulnerable, compliant and potentially susceptible to a false confession. The central issue was whether the conviction remained safe when judged by modern standards of fairness and in the light of that evidence.

1. Appeal allowed; conviction quashed. The court held that the only issue was whether the historic conviction was safe when judged by modern standards of fairness and by reference to the admitted fresh evidence. That approach accorded with R v Blackburn [2005] EWCA Crim. 1349.

2. The conviction rested wholly on the appellant's confession. Even by the standards at trial, the case gave serious cause for concern. The appellant was young and illiterate, was interviewed for about nine hours over three days without a solicitor, repeatedly retracted admissions, and gave accounts containing obvious inaccuracies. The interview records were incomplete.

3. By modern standards the interviews were unfair. The safeguards in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 Codes of Practice required advice about legal assistance and full recording of interviews. The court also considered that the officers' notes should then have been offered to the appellant for signature.

4. The fresh expert evidence materially strengthened the risk that the confession was unreliable. It identified psychological vulnerability, compliance under pressure and a real possibility of a false confession. Although the trial judge's warning about false confessions was adequate at the time, expert evidence would inevitably have required a stronger warning. Applying the Pendleton test, the court could not be sure that the jury would have convicted had it heard that evidence.

5. The Nottinghamshire Police cases, Cleary and Richardson [2004] EWCA Crim. 1784, did not assist because they turned on their own facts. No general inference could be drawn about all officers in a force: see R v Edwards (1991) 93 Cr.App.R 48.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) — on a Criminal Cases Review Commission reference, allowed the appeal and quashed the conviction: [2006] EWCA Crim 2983.
• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) — dismissed the appellant's earlier appeal against conviction on 23 March 1984.
• Nottingham Crown Court — convicted the appellant of murder on 27 May 1982 and sentenced him to life imprisonment.