Privy Council quashes murder conviction due to substantial miscarriage of justice: Kirsty Brimelow QC and Graeme Hall acted
On 4 April 2022, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council quashed Mr Lescene Edwards’s murder conviction, refused to apply the proviso, and ordered that there be no retrial. After 9 ½ years in prison, Mr Edwards will be released.
The Prosecution alleged that on the morning of 5 September 2003, Mr Edwards visited his partner and the mother of his children at her home in Jamaica. The Prosecution’s case was that Mr Edwards took the deceased into the bathroom, shot her, and staged a suicide - including the writing of a false suicide note.
The defence maintained that the deceased took her own life by using Mr Edwards’s police-issued firearm.
Ten years later, in 2013, Mr Edwards was convicted. He was sentenced to 35 years’ imprisonment. On 1 July 2019, the Court of Appeal of Jamaica dismissed Mr Edwards’s appeal against conviction but reduced the sentence to 20 years’ imprisonment.
On appeal to the Privy Council, Mr Edwards sought to rely on fresh evidence relating to ballistics (Mr Mark Mastaglio), gunshot residue (Ms Angela Shaw), and blood spatter (Ms Gillian Leak) to demonstrate that there had been a miscarriage of justice. Mr Edwards also argued that there had been a miscarriage of justice due to inter alia an unbalanced summing up, a failure adequately to direct the jury on the methodological flaws in the Prosecution’s handwriting evidence, and a failure properly to direct on the police’s unsubstantiated and prejudicial theories put to Mr Edwards in interview as to why he had the motive to kill the deceased.
The Board “had no hesitation” in dismissing the submission of the Respondent that the fresh evidence ought to be excluded. The Board “reached the clear conclusion” that in the light of the fresh evidence, the conviction could not be considered safe, and further questioned whether the case would have gone to the jury had the fresh evidence been available at trial.
Equally, the Board was critical of the trial judge’s summing up, which the Board found to be one-sided and unfavourable to the defence, and further held that the trial judge failed to give “clear warnings referring to the flaws in the methodology” of the Prosecution’s handwriting evidence, and concluded that the trial judge ought to have warned the jury that the police’s allegations were not evidence.
The Board further dismissed the Respondent’s submission that the proviso be applied, and stated that it “was not persuaded by this argument even in relation to the original grounds of appeal”.
Unusually, the Board concluded that it “commend[s] [Mr Edwards’s] case to the Jamaican authorities for their consideration for compensation for the miscarriage of justice”, and further stated that:
“The Board also wishes to express its appreciation to Mr Mastaglio, Ms Shaw and Mrs Leak; to Ms Brimelow QC and Mr Hall; and to their instructing solicitors Simons Muirhead and Burton, for acting without fee - truly pro bono publico - in bringing this very troubling case before the Board.”
Finally, the Board declared that Mr Edwards’s constitutional right to a trial within a reasonable time had been breached.
The Judgment can be found here.
Kirsty Brimelow QC and Graeme Hall were instructed by Saul Lehrfreund of the Death Penalty Project.
