Young v R.

A conviction founded on an unambiguous and voluntary guilty plea is ordinarily safe. A later acquittal, even when based on fresh expert evidence, does not itself make the earlier conviction unsafe.

The court must assess safety by considering all the circumstances in which the plea was entered. It must consider the evidence then available, the defendant’s admissions, and the advice received. Exceptional intervention may be justified where a good defence in law was overlooked and would quite probably have succeeded, or where the plea was a nullity. The later proceedings must not be used to recast a materially different earlier case.

In 1999 the appellant pleaded guilty at the Crown Court at Wood Green to inflicting grievous bodily harm contrary to section 20 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 upon his infant son. The contemporaneous evidence included cerebral injury, fractures and bruising. The appellant had admitted shaking the child and had received advice from leading counsel and defence medical experts.

The child died in 2011. At a 2014 manslaughter trial, the appellant was acquitted after fresh medical evidence raised cerebral venous sinus thrombosis and infection as possible causes of the cerebral injury. The interview evidence and evidence of fractures and bruising were excluded from that trial.

With a substantial extension of time, the appellant appealed his 1999 conviction. The central issue was whether the later acquittal and fresh medical evidence rendered his guilty plea and conviction unsafe.

1. Appeal dismissed. The appellant’s guilty plea was a formal and deliberate admission of guilt. The jurisdiction to disturb a conviction founded on such a plea is narrow. A plea may be a nullity where there was no true acknowledgment of guilt, or where a procedural defect meant that there was no valid trial. A conviction may also be unsafe in exceptional circumstances, including where an overlooked defence in law would quite probably have succeeded.

2. The correct inquiry was the safety of the 1999 conviction in all the circumstances in which the plea was entered. It was not enough to ask whether the fresh evidence available in 2014 might have given a defence a reasonable prospect of success. Nor could the court simply project the 2014 acquittal back onto the earlier prosecution.

3. The two proceedings concerned materially different evidential cases. In 1999, the appellant had admitted violently shaking the child. The available medical evidence, including evidence obtained for the defence, supported the view that the fractures and other injuries could have been caused during that incident. The appellant pleaded guilty with unchallenged advice from leading counsel.

4. The 2014 jury considered the narrower question whether the admitted shaking caused the cerebral injury from which the child later died. It did so without the interview evidence and without the evidence of fractures and bruising. The acquittal therefore did not establish an inconsistency with the earlier plea.

5. On the contemporaneous material, there was no basis to conclude that a defence to the charge under section 20 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 would quite probably have succeeded. The plea was neither a nullity nor productive of an unsafe conviction.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): In [2016] EWCA Crim 1321, dismissed the appellant’s late appeal against his conviction following a guilty plea.

• Crown Court at Wood Green: In 1999, the appellant pleaded guilty to inflicting grievous bodily harm and was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment.

• Central Criminal Court: In 2014, at a later trial before Singh J for manslaughter following the victim’s death, the appellant was acquitted.