R v Shane Anthony Hudson

A notice abandoning an appeal is irrevocable unless the Court of Appeal treats it as a nullity. The governing question is whether the abandonment was not a deliberate and informed decision, so that the applicant’s mind did not go with the notice.

Incorrect legal advice may support nullity only where it was positively wrong. A mistaken attempt to obtain a procedural advantage, unsupported allegations of pressure, or dissatisfaction with how related applications are listed does not suffice where the applicant understood the consequences and deliberately signed the notice.

The applicant had been convicted at the Crown Court at Nottingham in 2005 of conspiracy to pervert the course of public justice. In 2022, he was convicted of stalking Professor Guy Rutty, a pathologist involved in the 2005 trial, and sentenced to an extended determinate sentence.

Applications concerning the 2005 conviction and the later sentence were listed before the same constitution. The applicant then signed Form A abandoning the conviction proceedings, despite repeated warnings that abandonment was final. He later alleged pressure, sinister conduct, PTSD and lack of understanding, and applied for the abandonment to be treated as a nullity. The central issue was whether his mind went with the notice.

Application dismissed. The court held that the merits of the proposed appeal were irrelevant. The issue was confined to whether the notice of abandonment satisfied the established nullity test.

1. A notice of abandonment is irrevocable unless the Court of Appeal treats it as a nullity. Following the principles identified in R v Medway (Andrew George) [1976] QB 779, the relevant question is whether the abandonment resulted from a deliberate and informed decision, so that the applicant’s mind went with the act.
2. In R v Smith (Paul James) [2013] EWCA Crim 2388, the court had identified that incorrect legal advice may prevent the applicant’s mind from going with the notice. For this purpose, the advice must be positively wrong. An opinion on a difficult point, with which reasonable people may disagree, is insufficient.
3. This was not a case of incorrect legal advice. The applicant had repeatedly been told that abandonment could not be temporary and would probably be final. He completed and signed Form A in black ink and capitals, clearly abandoning the conviction proceedings but not the sentence proceedings.
4. There was no evidence that he had been threatened with punishment, that the court or CPS had acted improperly, or that he was suffering from PTSD so severely that he could not understand or think clearly. The evidence instead showed a conscious and deliberate attempt to influence the listing of the applications and obtain what he perceived as a procedural advantage. That self-misguided decision did not make the notice a nullity.
5. The Form A guidance, reflecting Criminal Procedure Rules r.36.13(4)(c), explained that abandonment treated an appeal or application as dismissed or refused and that conditional abandonment was not accepted. The application was therefore dismissed.

1. Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) dismissed the application to treat the applicant’s notice abandoning the conviction proceedings as a nullity.
2. Crown Court at Nottingham convicted the applicant in 2005 and sentenced him to four years’ imprisonment. In 2022 it convicted him of stalking and imposed an extended determinate sentence of nine years.