Stringer, R v

Where a defendant denies committing an act, police may properly explore by hypothetical questioning whether the defendant had the capacity to appreciate its natural and virtually certain consequences. Repetitive or clumsy questions do not make the answers inadmissible unless the interview was oppressive or unfair, particularly where the answers show understanding rather than acquiescence.

A direction on indirect intent must distinguish between the objective question whether death or serious injury was virtually certain and the subjective question whether the defendant appreciated that certainty. A summing-up error will not make convictions unsafe where, on the facts necessarily found by the jury, the inference of the required intent was overwhelming.

At Sheffield Crown Court, before Cox J, Matthew Stringer was convicted of murder and arson with intent to endanger life after a fire at his family home caused the death of his brother and serious injuries to other occupants. He was 14 at the time.

On appeal, he sought to adduce fresh evidence concerning a prosecution witness’s recollection of timing. He also challenged the admission of passages from his police interview and the judge’s treatment of those passages when directing the jury on intent. The appeal concerned whether those matters rendered the convictions unsafe.

1. Appeal dismissed. The application to adduce fresh evidence was refused. The later statement by Mrs Matthews suggested that her recollection of timing might have been inaccurate, but discrepancies in timing had already been explored at trial. What mattered was her and her husband’s evidence of what they saw. A possible error of several minutes did not materially affect that evidence or the safety of the verdicts.

2. The interview evidence was properly admitted. It was legitimate for the police to explore whether setting an accelerant fire at the foot of stairs while occupants slept upstairs would make death or serious injury virtually certain, and whether the appellant had capacity to appreciate that. The questions were repetitive and at times clumsy, but were neither oppressive nor unfair. The appellant’s answers showed that he understood the issue and did not simply accept the officers’ suggestions.

3. The trial judge was entitled to direct the jury on intent in accordance with R v Woollin [1999] 1 Cr App R 8. However, in later highlighting the interview, she conflated the objective question whether death or serious injury was virtually certain with the separate question whether the appellant appreciated that on the morning of the fire. The jury should instead have been directed to decide his actual appreciation from all the evidence.

4. That error did not render the convictions unsafe. If the jury found that the appellant started the accelerant fire while his family slept upstairs, watched it take hold and walked away, serious harm or death was a virtual certainty. Even allowing for his age and low-average IQ, the inference that he appreciated that certainty was overwhelming. The necessary intent therefore followed from the facts the jury must have found.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) — dismissed the appeal against convictions for murder and arson with intent to endanger life: [2008] EWCA Crim 1222.
• Sheffield Crown Court — Cox J convicted the appellant on 1 August 2007 after a trial lasting more than seven weeks.