Stephen Seddon [2019] EWCA Crim 1411

The applicant was convicted of two offences of attempt murder and two of murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 40 years with concurrent determinate sentences for the attempt offences. Five years later, he applied for an extension of time for leave to appeal his convictions.

The victims were the applicant’s parents who were carers for their nephew. The applicant took them out for lunch and swerved his car off the road into a river, the fire brigade arrived and rescued those trapped in the vehicle. Just over 3 months later, the applicant’s parents were found shot dead at their home. The bodies were left in positions to suggest suicide, but the prosecution case was that the applicant had murdered them.

The prosecution relied on circumstantial evidence with detailed evidence concerning his movements and activities on the day. Expert evidence was called about the timing of food eaten by the victims and the time of death. The evidence was significant; the longer the interval between the consumption of the food and death, the less likely it was the applicant was the killer.

The ground of appeal was that the judge did not properly sum up the significance of the joint expert reports.

Held: there was nothing more the judge could or should have said. Neither expert purported to make any dogmatic assertion as to a precise time of death and the jury were reminded in clear terms of the differences between the witnesses. The circumstantial evidence was compelling, and there was no basis for arguing the convictions were unsafe because of the suggested inadequacy of the summing-up on the one aspect of the expert evidence. The renewed application failed.