Advice on appealing conviction

[Rights Fighter]

Many LA sols do not take on appeals outside of their own cases.


You don't have to pay to put an appeal into action.

Some LA sols are really good in the same way as some privately paid sols, barristers and "legal enquiry agents" are totally useless. Happy to take your money and then do bog all.



http://www.pacso.co.uk is a workshop I've just recently started. It's gives ideas as to what grounds for appeal can be. Once I have finished the cases I am working on I will concentrate on that site to add more to it.

Also you do not need to pay for a solicitor (if you want to go down the private client route). Many barristers can be instructed via direct access.

Before you bombard anyone with emails though, do some work on the case yourself. Put the paperwork into two bundles - prosecution and defence. Then put them into strict chronological order.

If you can afford to buy the JSU - Judge's Summing Up - then contact the court transcribers (ask the convicting court who they were) and ask for a quote for the JSU, giving them the name of the def, the dates of the trial, the trial number (starts with a T).

Read through it all and make notes of what you remember happened at trial while you read the paperwork (don't write on the paperwork - use a separate notebook).

When you have done that, make a precis of the case as a "report", and outline what you think went wrong at trial. Do NOT write down every single inconsistency and discrepancy. The jury heard all that and convicted anyway so it won't help now.

Look for directions the judge should have given:


Burden and standard of proof

Special measures if there were witnesses behind a curtain or giving evidence via video link - the jury must not hold this against the def

If he has previous IRRELEVANT convictions he should be eligible for a modified good character direction

If he is a man of complete good character he is entitled to a proper direction for that

If there is delay between the alleged assaults and bringing to trial there should be a direction for that and it must not disadvantage the def

The judge should outline significant inconsistencies and say that they should treat this evidence with great care or caution

The judge must direct the jury that they cannot speak about the case it small groups, they must all be together in their jury room

The jury cannot discuss the case outside of their number and cannot investigate it online or via newspapers the media etc.


There are many more directions but those tend to be the general ones.


One you have gone through the case and made your "report" you will be ready to instruct a barrister via direct access (I can point you in the right direction) or you can approach a LA solicitor who will take it on - again I can help you with that.

[Rights Fighter]

Lack of proper Direction in Hearsay Evidence

I've just added this to the https://pacso.co.uk/grounds-for-appealing-convictions/ site

Recent / First Complaint / Hearsay Evidence

Extracts:

In R v CP [2011] EWCA Crim 2749, a case that also had no other independent support for the allegations, it was said:

‘The only evidence of rape was the complainant’s word and as she made her complaint to others near to the time of the alleged rape, the Judge should have said: “The jury must be reminded that a complaint cannot provide independent support because the source remains the witness.”

(This is confirmed in the “Crown Court Benchbook: Directing the Jury 2010”.) Instead, he said “I remind you that there is no forensic evidence of any sort, but there is further evidence of what she said to people soon after the event.” …

Having anxiously considered the case as a whole we think that had a proper direction been given it may be that the jury would still have convicted, but we find ourselves wholly unable to conclude that the jury must have convicted.

Accordingly, on the facts of this case, we are driven to conclude that the absence of a proper direction as to recent complaint, a direction emphasizing that the evidence was not independent of the complainant herself, renders this conviction unsafe.’


In R v A [2011] EWCA Crim 1517, it was stated:

‘The judge had made it clear that the primary task of the jury was to decide whether V or X was telling the truth. That was a clear direction to the jury regarding the importance of V’s evidence and was not diluted by any reference to supporting evidence.

It had to have been obvious that V’s own evidence of complaints, whether in the witness box or made to another person, was not evidence independent of her. The risk to be guarded against was that the jury might think, wrongly, that evidence from a witness to whom complaints had been made was independent evidence of the events described by the complainant. It was not.

Its relevance was to assist the jury in their assessment of whether the complainant’s evidence was credible and reliable. If no complaint had been made for a substantial time after the events complained of that might cause a jury, depending on how they regarded it, to doubt the truthfulness of the complainant’s account of events.

A timely and cogent complaint might assist the jury in concluding that her account was accurate. It all depended on the circumstances and how the jury regarded them. The degree of similarity between what V initially said happened and what she later said had happened might assist in assessing her reliability.
Under the Criminal Justice Act 2003 s.120, the complaint was evidence of what had happened between V and X; it was not evidence independent of V. In the instant case, there had been no specific direction to that effect.

The jury’s assessment of the complaints and the circumstances in which they were made had to have played a significant part in their deliberations, and the direction recommended by Laws L.J. in R. v AA [20077 EWCA Crim 1779 should have been given and should routinely be given …

There might be cases where failure to give it was fatal to the conviction. However, in the circumstances of the instant case and on the basis of the directions given, there was not a real risk that the jury were under the impression that J and S’s evidence was independent evidence of what had happened.

The jury had been sufficiently directed as to the relevance and significance of the complaints and had to have understood that the issue to which the complaints were relevant was the truthfulness and reliability of V and did not go beyond that. There was no doubt regarding the safety of the verdicts’


NOTE:

Therefore, the fact that such a direction is missing is not necessarily indisputable grounds for appeal, but this omission it should certainly be investigated further