R v Horncastle

Ratio Decidendi

Fapte

The appellants, Horncastle and others, had been convicted of serious offences at trials in which important prosecution evidence came from witnesses who did not testify in person: in one case the victim of a fatal assault had died before trial, and in another a complainant was too frightened to give live evidence. Their written statements were admitted under the hearsay provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The appellants argued that basing their convictions to a sole or decisive degree on the evidence of witnesses they could not cross-examine breached their right to a fair trial under Article 6(3)(d) ECHR, relying on the Strasbourg decision in Al-Khawaja and Tahery v United Kingdom.

Rezumatul hotărârii

The Supreme Court (a seven-Justice panel, Lord Phillips giving the lead judgment) unanimously dismissed the appeals and, unusually, declined to follow the Strasbourg Chamber's 'sole or decisive' rule in Al-Khawaja. The Court held that the carefully calibrated statutory scheme in the Criminal Justice Act 2003 — with its admissibility gateways, the requirement of a proper basis for admitting an absent witness's statement, judicial powers to exclude unreliable or unfair evidence, the sections 124–125 safeguards allowing the credibility of the absent witness to be challenged and requiring the case to be stopped where a conviction would be unsafe, and the mandatory jury warning — already provided sufficient counterbalancing measures to ensure a fair trial, so that a rigid sole-or-decisive bar was neither necessary nor workable in the common-law system. The decision prompted a rare and productive 'judicial dialogue' with the European Court, which in its subsequent Grand Chamber judgment in Al-Khawaja and Tahery v UK softened the sole-or-decisive rule into one factor to be weighed alongside counterbalancing safeguards, broadly aligning Strasbourg with Horncastle.

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