R v Nicholas Adam Curtis
2022
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
- LORD JUSTICE EDIS
- MR JUSTICE SWEETING
- SIR NICHOLAS BLAKE
Areas of Law
- Criminal Law and Procedure
- Evidence Law
2022
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
In this renewed application for leave to appeal, a three-judge Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) panel led by Lord Justice Edis considered ten grounds advanced by Nicholas Adam Curtis, who was convicted of Glenda Jacksons murder after a joint trial with his brother Stuart at the Crown Court at Liverpool. The grounds attacked defence handling of evidence about an initial altercation, sought exclusion of hospital statements recorded on body-worn video under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, alleged bias and inaccuracies in the judges summing-up, raised inadequate advice concerning an added manslaughter count, and proposed fresh evidence that Stuart would accept responsibility. The court agreed with the single judge that none of the grounds was arguable, found the summing-up fair, held the body-worn footage properly admitted, rejected the manslaughter advice complaint, refused to receive the fresh evidence under the Criminal Appeal Act 1968, and dismissed the renewed application and extension of time.
LORD JUSTICE EDIS:
Nicholas Adam Curtis is now 36 years old. On 29 April 2019, in the Crown Court at Liverpool, he was convicted of murder. No verdict was taken on Count 2 on the indictment, manslaughter, because that was an alternative to Count 1. His brother Stuart stood trial on the same indictment at the same time and was convicted of murder also. He has not applied for leave to appeal. Nicholas Curtis has applied for leave to appeal against conviction and now renews that application following refusal by the single judge. The single judge also refused his application for a long extension of time in which to apply for leave to appeal. He requires an extension of 1,025 days.
The Facts
It is not necessary, for the purposes of this decision on this renewed application for leave, to set out the facts on which the prosecution relied and the issues at trial in great detail. The applicant himself is plainly fully aware of the facts of the case, having provided to us an extensive summary of them at the start of his document to which we have already referred.
Essentially, the victim, Glenda Jackson, had been in company in Birkenhead with the Curtis brothers and others during the evening of 29 September 2018. A good deal of alcohol had plainly been consumed by all present and post-mortem sampling revealed that she had also taken some cocaine. In the early hours of the following morning, there was an altercation in the street between different members of the group. She became angry and threatened to stab the people with whom she had become angry. There was something of a standoff. The police attended. They saw that she had, by then, been injured. She said she did not want an ambulance. She said she did not want to make any complaint because she was going to deal with the matter herself. After they left, she managed to acquire a knife and an incident then occurred during which she was stabbed to death. The applicant later attended hospital, he himself having two stab wounds to his torso.
When he was in hospital, under the influence of some morphine administered to control the pain, he spoke to the police. The conversation was recorded on body worn video and in it he gave an explanation of how he had come to be in the hospital on which the prosecution later relied. He was not, at that time, a suspect in relation to the death of Glenda Jackson because her body had not been found by then. She was found at 7.55 in the morning on 30 September, lying dead in a commu