Valencia, R v

Evidence of bad character under the Criminal Justice Act 2003 is not confined to previous convictions of the same description or category as the charge. The statutory protection for certain childhood convictions does not create a near-miss rule outside its express terms. A court should nevertheless consider an application concerning a young defendant with particular care.

The relevance of prior convictions depends on the live issues and their circumstances. The strength of the prosecution case is also material. Evidence may properly be admitted where the case, assessed as a whole, is reasonably strong and the convictions bear on participation or identification.

The appellant appealed, with leave, against his conviction for unlawful wounding at the Crown Court at Woolwich. He had also been convicted of affray following a group fight in which the complainant was stabbed with a broken bottle.

The Crown relied on CCTV, the appellant’s injury and bloodstaining, and DNA found on a broken bottle at the location where the complainant was pursued. The appellant denied participation beyond acting in self-defence and denied possessing a bottle.

At trial, the Recorder admitted convictions for robbery and assault occasioning actual bodily harm. The appeal challenged that ruling on grounds concerning similarity, the appellant’s age, and the asserted weakness of the Crown’s case.

1. Appeal dismissed. The Recorder was entitled to admit the appellant’s previous convictions, and the resulting conviction for unlawful wounding was safe.
2. Criminal Justice Act 2003, section 103(2), does not make convictions of the same description or category the exclusive means of proving a propensity to commit offences of the relevant kind. The court treated that as established by R v Hanson [2005] 1 Cr App R 21.
3. The specific protection in section 108(2) did not apply. It could not be extended by analogy as a near-miss rule. Although the appellant’s age did not itself make admission unfair, a judge considering bad-character evidence concerning a person of tender years must exercise particular care. The Recorder had done so.
4. The convictions were sufficiently relevant to the issues at trial. The robbery showed participation with others in unjustified threatened violence, bearing on whether the appellant had participated in the affray rather than being an innocent bystander. The earlier assault showed use of a weapon to stab, bearing on the identity of the person who stabbed the complainant.
5. The Crown case was not so weak that the evidence should have been excluded. The bottle’s location, the appellant’s DNA and bleeding finger, the possible presence of the complainant’s DNA, and the late emergence of the appellant’s innocent explanation provided a reasonably strong evidential case. The Recorder’s summing-up dealt fairly with the weaknesses asserted in the identification and DNA evidence, including the need for supporting evidence.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): Dismissed the appeal against conviction for unlawful wounding and held the conviction safe.
• Crown Court at Woolwich: On 27 October 2014, convicted the appellant of affray and unlawful wounding. He received two years’ detention in a young offender institution for unlawful wounding, with a concurrent four-month term for affray.