R v Pendleton
When considering fresh evidence, the Court of Appeal should ask whether it might reasonably have affected the jury's decision to convict.
Facts
Donald Pendleton was convicted in 1986 of the murder of a 14 year old girl in 1971, largely on the basis of admissions he had made to the police. The Criminal Cases Review Commission referred the case to the Court of Appeal, with fresh psychological evidence that Mr Pendleton was abnormally suggestible and that his admissions might be unreliable. The Court of Appeal heard the fresh evidence but upheld the conviction, because it was satisfied that the conviction was safe.
Legal principle
The House of Lords quashed the conviction. Lord Bingham said that the Court of Appeal is not the primary decision maker, and that where fresh evidence is admitted, the court should ask itself whether the evidence, if given at the trial, might reasonably have affected the decision of the trial jury to convict. If it might, the conviction must be thought unsafe. The Court of Appeal had wrongly substituted its own view of the evidence for that of a jury, which had not heard the fresh evidence. Mr Pendleton was released after 14 years in prison.
Related cases on criminal justice, evidence and appeals
- Connelly v Director of Public Prosecutions [1964] AC 1254
- Murray v United Kingdom (1996) 22 EHRR 29
- R (Adams) v Secretary of State for Justice [2011] UKSC 18, [2012] 1 AC 48
- R (Hallam) v Secretary of State for Justice [2019] UKSC 2, [2020] AC 279
- R v Cooper [1969] 1 QB 267
- R v Cowan [1996] QB 373
- R v Davis [2008] UKHL 36, [2008] 1 AC 1128
- R v Dunlop [2006] EWCA Crim 1354, [2007] 1 WLR 1657
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