Summary of Opinion

Factual and Procedural Background

On 19 December 2022 two men (referred to here as Victim A and Victim B) were kidnapped and assaulted by a group of men. The prosecution alleged that the Appellant was one of those involved. After a trial in the Crown Court before Judge [Last Name] and a jury, the Appellant was convicted of six offences. The Appellant obtained leave to appeal and challenges his convictions on the basis that the trial judge wrongly refused an application to adjourn the trial so that expert evidence about the Appellant's autism could be obtained and presented.

The events described at trial were that Co-Defendant A arranged a meeting at The Restaurant in The City that was presented as a meeting to talk. The Appellant travelled from The City (having received a transfer of £100 from an individual described in the trial as Associate Two), arriving in The City and parking on The Street, a dead-end road. Victim A and Victim B were taken to The Street and were attacked: they were dragged from a car, sprayed with a chemical irritant, assaulted with weapons and bound; Victim A suffered very serious injuries and was hospitalised for an extended period; Victim B managed to escape and sustained less serious injury.

Some participants filmed the attacks on mobile phones. The prosecution's case included (i) the Appellant's travel to The Street and departure with Co-Defendant A; (ii) communications between the accused prior to the events; (iii) the transfer of money to the Appellant; (iv) mobile phone footage showing clothing that the prosecution said identified the cameraman as the Appellant; (v) communications after the offences in which the Appellant forwarded videos to Co-Defendant A; (vi) the Appellant's refusal to provide a phone code to enable police analysis; and (vii) bad character evidence from previous convictions.

At trial Co-Defendant A and Co-Defendant B pleaded guilty; the Appellant, Co-Defendant C and Co-Defendant D were tried together. The Appellant gave evidence through an interpreter, denied participation in the offences, said he remained in his car and did not see the assaults, and said he forwarded videos to Co-Defendant A without having watched them because he had been told he would receive videos from a foreign number and should forward them.

During the Appellant's evidence, the Appellant's solicitor (who spoke the Appellant's language) sent an email expressing concern that the Appellant might be autistic and requested permission to instruct an expert to assess him during the upcoming week, a week when the court was not sitting. No adjournment application was made immediately and the Appellant completed his evidence. An expert report was later obtained and served; the Appellant then applied for an adjournment, which the trial judge refused. The jury convicted the Appellant and Co-Defendant C of all counts and acquitted Co-Defendant D. The Appellant now appeals, and seeks to adduce the expert's report as fresh evidence under section 23 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1968.

Legal Issues Presented

1. Whether the trial judge's refusal to grant an adjournment to permit the adducing of expert evidence concerning the Appellant's autism was an improper exercise of judicial discretion that rendered the convictions unsafe.
2. Whether, assuming the expert evidence (report) could have been admitted, its relevance to the real issues in the case was sufficient that its exclusion could have affected the jury's verdicts.

Arguments of the Parties

Appellant's Arguments

• The trial judge's refusal to adjourn was an improper exercise of discretion because it excluded evidence that was relevant and admissible on an important issue and therefore rendered the convictions unsafe.
• The Appellant's defence was that he had been persuaded to travel to The City for a non-criminal purpose, had remained in his car and had no part in the offences; the expert evidence that the Appellant was autistic and more susceptible to manipulation could support that account and explain why he might have forwarded videos without appreciating their significance.
• Challenges to the expert evidence (as to diagnosis or consequences) would go to weight, not admissibility, and could have been tested by cross-examination if the adjournment had been granted.

Respondent's Arguments

• The trial judge was right to refuse the adjournment because the diagnosis, even if accepted, was of limited or no relevance to the real issues in the trial.
• Even if the ruling had been erroneous, the prosecution case was strong and the convictions would nonetheless be safe.
• The prosecution contended that the evidence identified the Appellant as the cameraman in much of the footage, including footage showing the cameraman assaulting Victim A; the prosecution also questioned the reliability of the late diagnosis based largely on self-report shortly after the Appellant had given evidence.
• If the expert evidence were to be admitted, the prosecution would require time to obtain its own expert evidence in response, which justified requiring an adjournment if that route were to be followed.

Table of Precedents Cited

No precedents were cited in the provided opinion.

Court's Reasoning and Analysis

The court analysed the chronology and context in which the issue of autism was raised: the matter emerged while the Appellant was giving evidence, the Appellant could not consult his legal representatives at that immediate time, the expert report was only later served, and an application for an adjournment was only made after the trial break and after all evidence had been completed. The consequence was that the respondent had no realistic opportunity to obtain expert evidence in response before the jury resumed consideration of the case.

The court noted that the respondent challenged the admissibility of the expert report on relevance grounds, and observed that the appellate court did not know whether responsive expert evidence would have provided a different basis for exclusion. For present purposes the court assumed (without deciding) that the expert report would not have been excluded on grounds other than relevance, and further assumed (again without deciding) that certain limited propositions in the report might have been admissible: that the Appellant was autistic; that he may have had greater difficulty "seeing the bigger picture"; that he may have been more trusting and less inclined to question others; and that he may have been more vulnerable to exploitation.

The court emphasised that admissibility turns on relevance to the real issues in the case. It analysed the Appellant's case and concluded that the expert evidence was at best marginally relevant. The Appellant's defence was that he did not know of the plan to commit kidnap and assault and played no part; he asserted he did not even see the assaults. The court observed that the Appellant did not advance a case that he had been manipulated into participation such that autism-based vulnerability would explain why he failed to question or resist a plan of which he had been informed. Accordingly, the expert evidence could not be used to prop up an account that the jury had rejected and could not be admitted simply to support a hypothesised scenario that had never been put in evidence.

The court also reasoned that the expert evidence could not assist on the clear prosecution evidence that the Appellant was the person who recorded most of the videos (including footage depicting the cameraman assaulting Victim A). The marginal relevance of the expert evidence, together with the practical difficulties its admission would have created for continuing the joint trial of three defendants, supported the trial judge's refusal to adjourn. The court considered and rejected the suggestion that severance of the Appellant's trial from his co-defendants at that late stage would have been realistic.

Finally, the court addressed whether any other consequence of the judge's ruling could render the convictions unsafe. The court concluded that the prosecution case was strong, the jury rejected the Appellant's evidence, and there was no realistic basis to think that knowledge of the expert opinion would have altered the jury's verdicts.

Holding and Implications

DISMISSED

The court dismissed the appeal. The direct effect is that the Appellant's convictions are upheld. The court concluded that (i) the trial judge was entitled to refuse the adjournment given the late timing of the issue and the marginal relevance of the expert evidence to the real issues at trial; (ii) admission of the expert evidence would have caused significant practical difficulties in the ongoing joint trial; and (iii) even if the judge's ruling were arguable as wrong, the strength of the prosecution case meant the convictions remained safe. The opinion does not purport to establish a new general principle of law; it affirms that courts must assess relevance to the real issues and the practical consequences of late applications for expert evidence, and that refusal to adjourn in such circumstances will not necessarily render convictions unsafe.

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This summary has been prepared solely from the content of the provided opinion and has been fully anonymised in accordance with the instructed placeholders.