Skelton, R (On the Application Of) v Winchester Crown Court

An application to state a case is frivolous where it is futile, misconceived, hopeless or academic. The case-stated jurisdiction permits challenges to legal error or excess of jurisdiction, but not challenges to factual findings or the weight given to evidence.

A criminal court must consider self-defence where the evidence, viewed in the round, raises a prima facie case, even if the defendant has not expressly relied on it. A hopeless defence need not be left for consideration. Once the court finds that force was used deliberately in retaliation, rather than in self-defence, the lawfulness of an earlier and separate restraint may be irrelevant to guilt.

Teresa Skelton was convicted of common assault after the Crown Court dismissed her appeal from the magistrates’ court. The Crown Court found that she had deliberately kicked a police community support officer after being escorted from a meeting and that the kick was unlawful.

She applied to the Crown Court to state a case, arguing that the court had failed to consider self-defence and the lawfulness of the force used to remove her. The Crown Court refused, considering the proposed questions misconceived and directed to factual findings. Judicial review was sought against that refusal. The central issue was whether the proposed questions were frivolous within the case-stated procedure.

1. Claim dismissed. The Crown Court was entitled and right to refuse to state a case. The proposed questions were, in substance, challenges to findings of fact or questions that did not arise on the facts found.
2. Under section 28(1) of the Senior Courts Act 1981, a Crown Court decision may be questioned by case stated for legal error or excess of jurisdiction. The weight of the evidence is outside that jurisdiction. Following R. v North West Suffolk (Mildenhall) Magistrates’ Court, ex parte Forest Heath District Council [1998] Env. L.R. 9, “frivolous” means futile, misconceived, hopeless or academic. It is not enough that the lower court considers its decision correct.
3. The Crown Court had correctly directed itself that it had to decide whether there was a kick, whether it was deliberate, and whether it was unlawful. It also correctly recognised that, if self-defence were raised by the evidence, the prosecution would have to disprove lawful justification.
4. The principles in DPP (Jamaica) v Bailey [1995] 1 Cr. App. R. 257 and R. v Bonnick (1978) 66 Cr. App. R. 266 did not assist the claimant. The Crown Court had considered the evidence as a whole and had not imposed a requirement that self-defence be formally relied upon. It found as fact that the kick was deliberate retaliation, not an attempt to defend herself.
5. At least on these facts, retaliation and lawful self-defence were mutually exclusive. The principle stated in R. v Bird [1985] 2 All E.R. 513 supported that conclusion. Once the Crown Court found that the kick was not self-defence, it did not need to determine whether the earlier force used to escort the claimant from the hall was lawful, or whether she believed it to be unlawful.
6. The court’s additional answers were that questions (i) and (ii) involved no legal misdirection; question (iii) could be answered yes; and question (iv), which had been abandoned, was unnecessary to determine.

The claimant was convicted in the Aldershot Magistrates’ Court on 29 April 2016. The Winchester Crown Court dismissed her appeal on 4 October 2016 and refused to state a case on 25 October 2016. The High Court granted permission for judicial review and dismissed the claim.