Courtney Georgia Brierley [2019] EWCA Crim 1231

Courtney Georgia Brierley v R [2019] EWCA Crim 1231 was a renewed application to the Court of Appeal (Lord Justice Holroyde, Mr Justice Warby and Mr Justice Julian Knowles) which was refused on both conviction and sentence grounds.

Miss Brierley had been convicted after trial in the Crown Court at Manchester before William Davis J of four counts of manslaughter. She was sentenced to concurrent terms of twenty-one years’ detention in a young offender institution. The single judge had refused leave to appeal against both conviction and sentence, and those applications were renewed to the full court.

The applicant, who was aged twenty at the time, was in a relationship with Zak Bolland, then aged twenty-three. Bolland had been engaged in a feud with Kyle and Lewis Pearson, involving a series of tit-for-tat incidents including graffiti, window smashing and damage by fire to cars and dustbins. The applicant had been involved in some of those incidents.

In the early hours of 11 December 2017, Bolland, his friend David Worrall and the applicant had been drinking and taking cocaine. A young woman called Toome took them to a petrol station where petrol was purchased. Bolland and Worrall used the petrol to make two petrol bombs and armed themselves with a machete and an axe. Toome then drove the three of them to the Pearson family home. The two men entered the back garden and broke a rear window. Worrall threw the smaller petrol bomb into the house, which ignited to a limited extent, then left the garden. As he did so, Bolland threw the larger petrol bomb into the house. It exploded with great force and the entire house was very quickly ablaze. Kyle Pearson and a friend escaped from an upstairs window suffering smoke inhalation. Four younger siblings aged between seven and fifteen died in the fire. Their mother survived but suffered life-threatening injuries requiring months of hospital treatment and from which she would never recover.

The applicant, Bolland and Worrall were jointly charged with four offences of murder, three offences of attempted murder and arson. The prosecution case against the applicant was that she had encouraged and assisted her co-accused with full knowledge of their plans. Her case was that she was aware petrol had been purchased but did not know petrol bombs had been made and did not know of any intention to set fire to anything other than rubbish bins, as had happened on an earlier occasion. Her trial counsel conceded in their written advice on appeal that the evidence entitled the jury to find that she did assist and encourage her co-accused.

The learned judge provided the jury with written directions of law and routes to verdict in respect of each of the three accused. The jury were directed to consider each accused separately and were directed as to the several possible alternative verdicts.

On each of the four counts alleging murder, the jury found the applicant not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter. They found her not guilty of the charges of attempted murder. Bolland was convicted of all the offences of murder and attempted murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of forty years. Worrall was convicted of the four murder offences, found not guilty of attempted murder but guilty of three offences of attempting to cause grievous bodily harm with intent.

The grounds of appeal against conviction contended that in the light of the evidence and the way the prosecution case was put, the convictions were unsafe. It was argued that the convictions were inconsistent with other verdicts, contrary to the way the case was conducted and left to the jury, and irrational. In particular, it was said that the applicant in her evidence admitted knowing the house was occupied. It was submitted that it was difficult to see how the jury could have followed the route to verdict without concluding that the applicant was guilty of murder. It was also said to be difficult to see how the jury could have been sure that she assisted or encouraged her co-accused to throw petrol bombs into an occupied house and yet not sure that she intended any occupant to suffer serious injury.

The written grounds argued that it could be inferred that the jury were overwhelmed by the complexity of the judge’s directions and unable to follow them. It was suggested that the verdicts could be explained by a finding that the applicant had assisted or encouraged her co-accused in an unlawful act other than throwing petrol bombs into the house, which carried an obvious risk of some injury but was not intended to cause death or serious injury. However, it was argued, such an explanation could not be supported in view of the way the case was conducted and the route to verdict provided.

The ground of appeal against sentence was closely linked. It was accepted that twenty-one years’ detention could not be regarded as manifestly excessive if the applicant had been party to a plan to petrol-bomb an occupied house, but if that was not the basis of her conviction the sentence was said to be arguably excessive.

The Court rejected the grounds. Lord Justice Holroyde, giving the judgment of the Court, noted that given that a number of alternative verdicts were possible in law depending on the jury’s findings as to the acts and intentions of each individual accused, and given that the cases against and for each of the three accused differed in significant respects, it was inescapably necessary for the routes to verdict to cover all possible verdicts open to the jury. The Court rejected the submission that they were over-complicated or so difficult to follow as to cause confusion. The jury at one stage asked for a further direction in respect of Worrall but did not seek assistance in respect of the applicant.

The Court also rejected the submission that the verdicts were irrational or so inconsistent with other verdicts that the convictions were unsafe. The convictions of manslaughter could readily be explained on the basis identified by the judge when passing sentence, namely that the jury were sure the applicant assisted or encouraged the others to attack the house with petrol bombs and knew the house was occupied, but were not sure that she intended anyone in the house to be killed or seriously injured. The same basis explained the acquittals on the attempted murder counts. It would have been open to the jury to be sure of the intent necessary for murder convictions, but they were not bound to find that intent proved. The suggested inconsistency between verdicts, far from casting doubt on the safety of the convictions, was in the Court’s view an indication that the jury properly considered the cases of each accused separately and, as they were entitled to do, reached different conclusions about their respective intentions at the material time.

The Court was satisfied that there was no arguable ground on which the safety of the convictions could be challenged. It followed that there was no arguable ground on which the sentence could be said to be manifestly excessive. In short, the renewed applications were refused on the basis that the jury’s manslaughter verdicts were explicable and safe, properly reflecting a finding that Miss Brierley assisted and encouraged the attack knowing the house was occupied but without proven intent to kill or cause serious harm.