Childs (Aka Greenfield), R. v

Fresh psychiatric or psychological evidence does not render guilty pleas unsafe merely because the defendant has personality disorders, psychopathy, or a history of lying. The court must assess all the evidence and require clear and compelling medical evidence that the disorders caused the confessions and pleas to be unreliable.

Fitness to plead is highly material but not conclusive. A decision quashing co-accuseds’ convictions because a witness was unreliable does not itself undermine that witness’s own guilty pleas. An exceptionally late appeal must also be commenced and pursued with proper expedition.

The applicant pleaded guilty before Lawson J at the Central Criminal Court in 1979 to six murders and received life sentences. In 2012, he sought an extension of 32 years and leave to appeal, relying on fresh expert evidence that his severe personality disorders made his confessions and pleas unreliable unless corroborated.

He also relied on the quashing of his co-accuseds’ convictions in R v MacKenney and Pinfold, [2003] EWCA Crim 3643. The court received the expert evidence de bene esse and considered whether it showed that the pleas might be unreliable, and, if so, whether the convictions remained safe.

1. The court refused the application for leave to appeal out of time. The convictions founded on the applicant’s confessions and guilty pleas were not unsafe.

2. The experts agreed that the applicant had antisocial and narcissistic personality disorders, met the psychopathy threshold, and lied. They also agreed that his lies were generally instrumental and directed to what he perceived to be his own interests. Those diagnoses did not, without more, establish that his confessions and pleas were unreliable.

3. Clear and compelling medical evidence was required to show that the disorders caused the confessions and pleas. There was no such evidence. The applicant was fit to plead; he was no more suggestible than the average person; there was no material calling the conduct of the police into question; and the contemporaneous evidence showed a rational belief that co-operation could reduce his imprisonment and protect his family. His experienced legal representatives had no doubt that he deliberately chose to plead guilty.

4. Following R v Lee, [1984] 1 WLR 578, fitness to plead was a powerful but not conclusive consideration. The earlier quashing of the co-accuseds’ convictions was distinguished. That appeal concerned the safety of convictions dependent on the applicant as a witness, and the Crown had called no evidence to challenge the psychiatric evidence there. It did not determine the reliability of the applicant’s own confessions and pleas.

5. The delay was also unexplained. An appeal brought decades after conviction must be launched and pursued with much greater expedition.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): Refused the applicant leave to appeal out of time and held that his convictions were safe.

• Central Criminal Court: In 1979, Lawson J accepted the applicant’s guilty pleas to six murders and imposed life sentences.