This essay will advise Mr Robert Solomon (RS) of the grounds that he may be able to appeal on to the Court of Appeal (CA). The specific issue is that there was an error in the Crown Court judge’s summing up concerning breaches of PACE Code D in relation to the identification by Lauren Jervis (LJ) not being drawn to the jury’s attention. The CA will ‘allow the appeal if the conviction is unsafe’ and will result in a conviction being quashed or a re-trial ordered. Cooper interprets unsafe as a lurking doubt about any injustice. A lurking doubt includes the wrongful: admission or exclusion of evidence, and the conduct of lawyer’s and judge’s. A judge making an error in the summing up is a common ground for appeal. RS would claim that the judge acted wrongfully by failing to mention or direct the jury on the breaches of Code D and claim such an injustice has rendered his conviction unsafe. This is of great importance because if the breaches had been correctly stated, the jury may not have reached the same verdict. Code D deals solely with the admissibility of …show more content…
The only description LJ has made is that the suspect was RS and he was wearing a balaclava in her first statement. The police clearly failed to take a description because LJ claimed she recognized the suspect. However, it is still necessary to take a description even where the identifying witness recognizes the suspect, to test the reliability of that identification. The omission of the police has deprived RS of one of the means to challenge LJ’s identification since, there was no record available to RS and his solicitor to examine. It would have allowed a comparison to be made between LJ’s initial description and RS. Consequently, the judge should have given a direction to the jury on this breach explaining the consequences of the