The 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trial's end that the judge should have withdrawn the case from the jury.
Sam Hallam was initially refused leave to appeal against his
conviction by a single judge. At a hearing before three judges on
23rd October 2006, the Court of Appeal granted leave.
Sam Hallam's 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".
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 the Court of Appeal's judgment dismissing Sam Hallam's appeal,
Latham LJ faced a clear problem concerning BK's evidence at trial. The
transcript of BK's trial testimony shows that he effectively disowned his
identification of Sam Hallam as set out in his second written statement of
20th October 2004.
However, without this statement, there existed precious little evidence to
link Sam Hallam with Essayas Kassahun's murder (it will be recalled that
while PH's second statement placed Sam Hallam at the scene, she "could
not say exactly what he did").
Latham LJ's ingenious explanation for the manifest discrepancies between
BK's second statement and his oral trial testimony was to speculate that the
manner in which he gave his evidence at trial might have conveyed the
opposite impression to the jury than the apparent meaning of his words when
written down. Latham LJ offered no description of how such an
extraordinary feat might have been accomplished. /next
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