Grant & Ors v R.

An intention to kill necessarily includes an intention to cause really serious injury. Counts of attempted murder and of causing grievous bodily harm with intent may therefore stand together where a shot intended to kill one person seriously injures others. The offences have different victims and are not alternatives merely because conviction on the attempted-murder count makes conviction on the grievous-bodily-harm counts highly likely.

Directions should identify the issues separately, but a minor infelicity will not make convictions unsafe where the jury understood the contested case. Evidence of gunshot residue was admissible where it had narrow but obvious potential relevance. A less detailed direction on simple evidence, or an imperfect bad-character direction which did not prejudice the defendant, did not undermine safety.

Three appellants were convicted at the Central Criminal Court of the attempted murder of Roshaun Bryan and of causing grievous bodily harm with intent to two customers injured when shots were fired into a shop. The prosecution alleged that Grant was the gunman and that Kolawole and McCalla participated as secondary parties.

The appellants challenged the legal compatibility of the attempted-murder count and the two grievous-bodily-harm counts. They also raised complaints about the steps-to-verdict document, the summing-up, gunshot-residue evidence found on jeans connected with McCalla, and the treatment of McCalla’s previous convictions.

The central issue was whether an intention to kill the intended target could coexist with the intention to cause really serious injury required for the counts under section 18.

1. The appeals were dismissed. The court rejected the submission that the count of attempted murder and the two counts under section 18 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 were legally inconsistent.

2. An intention to kill Bryan necessarily included an intention to cause him really serious physical harm. Proof of the mens rea for attempted murder therefore proved the mens rea for causing grievous bodily harm with intent. The fact that the serious injuries were inflicted on different, actual victims did not make the section 18 counts alternatives to attempted murder, nor require the Crown to elect between them.

3. The court held that the words “at least really serious injury” simply meant not less than really serious injury. They neither altered the statutory ingredients nor confused the jury. The authority concerning transferred intent and attempted murder of unintended victims did not assist because those attempted-murder counts had already been removed from the indictment.

4. It would have been preferable for the steps-to-verdict document and the answer to the jury’s question to refer to “the gunman” rather than Grant. In the context of a fully contested trial, however, the jury knew that Grant disputed being the gunman. The wording did not render any conviction unsafe.

5. The gunshot-residue evidence was rightly admitted. It was capable, if the jury rejected McCalla’s explanation, of modestly strengthening the prosecution case that he was involved in the shooting. Its limits were clear from the evidence, so neither a ruling in greater detail nor a more elaborate direction was necessary. The court did not need to consider section 78 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984.

6. Although a fuller direction on McCalla’s previous convictions would have been preferable, the direction given protected rather than prejudiced him. Taken with the evidence and addresses, it did not call the safety of the convictions into question.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) — dismissed the appeals against conviction and rejected the renewed applications: [2014] EWCA Crim 143.
• Central Criminal Court — on 26 March 2012, convicted the appellants of attempted murder and two counts of causing grievous bodily harm with intent; on 19 April 2012, imposed concurrent life sentences with minimum terms.