Doyle & Ors, R v

In assessing whether a recorded communication is hearsay, the court must identify the matter to be proved, decide whether the communication states that matter, and ask whether the maker intended another person to believe or act upon it as true. That inquiry does not end the admissibility question. Evidence may nevertheless be admitted in the interests of justice under Criminal Justice Act 2003 section 114.

A conviction will not be unsafe where the trial judge has individually assessed the recordings, properly considered the statutory factors, and given appropriate directions. The court explained the approach in R v Twist, [2011] EWCA Crim 1143.

The applicants were convicted at the Crown Court sitting at Woolwich following the Hatton Garden burglary. Doyle was convicted of concealing, converting or transferring criminal property. Wood and Lincoln were convicted of conspiracy to commit burglary and conspiracy to conceal, convert or transfer criminal property.

The prosecution relied on surveillance, communications evidence and conversations covertly recorded in vehicles. It also relied on adverse inferences from silence. The applicants renewed applications for leave to appeal conviction after a single judge had refused leave. They challenged the admission of the probe evidence, the rejection of Doyle’s submission of no case to answer, and, in Wood’s case, the admission of co-defendants’ antecedents and sentences.

1. The renewed applications for leave to appeal conviction were rejected. The court was not persuaded that the single judge had erred or that any conviction was unsafe.
2. The court explained the hearsay inquiry in R v Twist, [2011] EWCA Crim 1143. It distinguishes a statement intended to cause action from one intended to cause belief in the truth of a stated matter. The latter may engage the hearsay rules. Relevance and the legitimacy of the proposed inference remain necessary even where a communication is not relied upon for its hearsay content.
3. The court nevertheless held that the probe-evidence challenge failed because the trial judge was entitled to admit the evidence in the interests of justice under section 114(1)(d) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The judge had considered the section 114(2) factors, assessed each extract separately, and directed the jury correctly. The court also considered the multiple-hearsay point under section 121 and the particular extracts relied on by Lincoln. Neither showed error or unsafety.
4. In Doyle’s case, the evidence was capable of supporting an inference that he knowingly facilitated the transfer of criminal property by arranging privacy and the absence of employees. The submission of no case to answer was therefore properly rejected.
5. In Wood’s case, the court clarified that section 100(1)(b), rather than section 100(1)(a), was the provision in issue. Any arguable error concerning the co-defendants’ antecedents or the unusual admission of sentence details was far from fatal to the safety of the conviction.
6. The court also declined to deduct time from Wood’s and Lincoln’s sentences.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): renewed applications for leave to appeal conviction were rejected.
• Single judge of the Court of Appeal: refused leave to appeal conviction.
• Crown Court sitting at Woolwich: convicted the applicants and imposed the sentences challenged in the applications.