Magee & Anor v Derbyshire Police

In an appeal from a civil jury trial concerning arrests and detention under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE), issues should be withdrawn from a jury only where one verdict alone would be rational and any other would be perverse. A police officer may express suspicion of burglary compendiously; the officer need not analyse every constituent element of the offence. The statutory tests for reasonable grounds and necessity remain distinct. Section 28 requires communication of the essential legal and factual grounds for arrest, ordinarily the what, when and where, but not detailed particulars of how the offence was committed. A jury may draw reasonable inferences from circumstantial and incomplete evidence. Weak evidence does not, by itself, justify withdrawing an issue.

The appellants challenged rulings made by His Honour Judge Godsmark QC at a jury trial in the Nottingham County Court concerning claims against the Chief Constable of Derbyshire Police. The claims arose from the appellants’ arrest, detention and handcuffing during a suspected burglary at premises occupied by the first appellant.

The jury found for the respondent on the principal claims. Judgment was nevertheless entered for each appellant for a limited period of false imprisonment caused by failure to review detention under section 40 of PACE. The appellants appealed the rulings leaving questions to the jury, the treatment of the arrest and detention issues, and the decision that handcuffing was reasonable.

1. Disposition. The appeal was dismissed. The jury’s verdicts and the judge’s consequential conclusions were not shown to be wrong.
2. Withdrawal of issues. The trial judge must identify the factual issues necessary to determine the case, but should not withdraw an issue where the evidence is capable of supporting a rational verdict either way. Withdrawal is justified only where one verdict alone would be rational and any other would be perverse. This applied to the decisions under challenge.
3. PACE section 24. The statutory arrest questions include the officer’s subjective suspicion or belief, objective reasonable grounds, and the exercise of discretion. Suspicion is a low threshold. An officer who says that he suspected burglary need not dismantle that suspicion into its constituent elements. The evidence of entry through a damaged window, at night, reports that the property should be vacant, lack of a key, refusal to co-operate and related circumstances provided a sufficient evidential basis for the jury and reasonable grounds for the judge’s objective assessment.
4. Necessity. The officer had to honestly believe that arrest was necessary for an identified statutory reason and that belief had to be objectively reasonable. The evidence that arrest was necessary to prevent further offending and to permit custody and questioning was capable of satisfying section 24(5). No statutory formula or “statutory mantra” was required.
5. PACE section 28. The essential legal and factual grounds had to be communicated or made apparent. The required information was the offence and when and where it was allegedly committed. Detailed particulars of the manner of commission were unnecessary. Whether the surrounding circumstances made the grounds sufficiently clear was a jury question.
6. PACE section 37. The jury could assess whether the custody officer honestly believed detention was necessary to secure, preserve or obtain evidence and whether the belief was reasonable. In the second appellant’s case, the jury could draw an inference from the substantially identical circumstances, despite the absence of the custody record. The evidence was weak but not incapable of supporting a verdict.
7. Handcuffing. The judge was entitled to infer from the circumstances, including violence or potential violence at the scene, that handcuffing for transport was reasonable. Evidence from every officer who applied the handcuffs was not a necessary condition of the respondent’s case succeeding.

• High Court (Queen’s Bench Division): appeal from rulings made by His Honour Judge Godsmark QC and a jury in the Nottingham County Court. The appeal was dismissed.
• Nottingham County Court: the jury found for the respondent on the principal claims. Judgment was entered for each appellant for a limited period of false imprisonment arising from failure to conduct the first detention review under section 40 of PACE.