Young, Innocent and Inside - The Case of Sam Hallam

5 (of 7) Appeal

Sam's counsel lodged application for leave to appeal on 4th November 2005. The sole ground of appeal was that the state of the identification evidence was such by the trial's end that the judge should have withdrawn the case from the jury.  Leave to appeal  was initially refused by a single judge. At a hearing before three judges on 23rd October 2006, the Court of Appeal granted leave.  

The full appeal hearing took place at the Royal Courts of Justice on 22nd March 2007. The court comprised the Vice President of the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division), Lord Justice Latham sitting with Mr Justice Treacy and Mr Justice Royce. Sam's counsel, Robert Fortune QC reiterated that the case against Sam Hallam consisted solely of identification evidence with which prosecutor David Hatton QC who acted for the Crown at Sam's trial agreed.

Latham LJ consequently stated that that the appeal hearing must, therefore "concentrate on whether the case should have gone to the jury".  Sam's counsel argued that the trial judge was wrong in allowing the flawed identification evidence to go before the jury. Both witnesses had given conflicting accounts in police interviews, written statements and trial testimony. Robert Fortune detailed the many anomalies, contradictions and inconsistencies in their evidence.
Under the Turnbull guidelines, identification evidence may be so poor and unsupported by other evidence that the trial judge should withdraw the case from the jury. This "protects a jury from acting upon the type of evidence which even if believed, experience has shown to be a possible source of injustice".

Responding to the arguments put forward by Sam Hallam's counsel, David Hatton QC for the Crown emphasised that PH's second witness statement placed Sam Hallam at the scene albeit that she could not say "what he was doing". So far as BK's evidence was concerned, Mr Hatton argued that the trial judge had issued sufficient warning to the jury to "carefully and properly examine the circumstances in which the identification by BK was made".     

Old Street, Finsbury

Latham LJ expressed the Court of Appeal's "concern" that the trial judge stated that BK had 'agreed'  in his trial testimony with the truth of his 20th October 2004 statement when he only agreed that he had made it and his sworn testimony actually negated its contents. During the appeal, Latham LJ interjected more than once to comment that it was " difficult to get a feel for how the evidence was given" at the trial i.e. that a written transcript of words spoken by witnesses does not necessarily convey all of the impression which witnesses' demeanour and behaviour communicated in court.

In delivering its verdict, the Court of Appeal faced a clear problem. The transcript of BK's trial testimony showed that he had effectively disowned his identification of Sam Hallam as set out in his 20th October statement. Without this statement, there would be no evidence linking Sam Hallam to the murder (PH's second statement only alleged he was at the scene. She "could not say exactly what he did"). The Court's ingenious explanation for the irreconcilable contradiction between BK's second statement and his trial testimony was to speculate that he might have given his evidence in such a manner that it gave an entirely opposite impression to the jury to the apparent meaning of his words as written down. The Court offered no description how such an  extraordinary feat might have been accomplished. /next