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Fitness to Plead: The Pritchard Criteria

What happens when the suspect in a murder trial is unable to understand the trial process? And what has that got to do with a man accused of having sex with an animal in 1836?

In October 2012, 65 year-old Colin Hammond was stabbed to death in a street in Fulham, southwest London, by Frederic Russell, a 27 year-old Frenchman who had been in the country for only a few days. The two men were almost certainly complete strangers.

Russell had a history of paranoid schizophrenia but unlike other mentally ill defendants did not respond to treatment. By September 2013, psychiatrists agreed he was so unwell that he was not capable of even giving his lawyers instructions.

When this issue is raised by the prosecution or the defence, the judge has to decide whether the defendant is ‘fit to plead’ using the ‘Pritchard Criteria’, as set out in the case R v Pritchard from 1836.

That case involved a deaf and mute man accused of bestiality. As he could not speak, he was unable to plead ‘not guilty’ (although he could indicate this by a sign, having been educated at the Deaf and Dumb Asylum in London).

It was left to the jury to decide ‘whether he was sane or not’ – meaning whether he could understand the trial proceedings enough to mount a defence to the charge. The judge set out his own three points, which were later turned into the ‘Pritchard Criteria’.*

Under these criteria, the accused is unfit to plead if he or she is unable:

to comprehend the course of proceedings on the trial, so as to make a proper defence;
to know that he might challenge any jurors to whom he/she may object;
to comprehend the evidence; or to give proper instructions to his/her legal representatives

If the judge finds the defendant unfit to plead then a jury is asked to decide whether he ‘did the act’ or not (instead of guilty or not guilty). The defendant can then be detained under the Mental Health Act, put under a supervision and treatment order or given an absolute discharge (meaning no further action).

In the case of Frederic Russell, he was detained indefinitely under the Mental Health Act, meaning he can only be released when medical professionals find he is no longer a risk to the public. Theoretically, if his condition improves and he is found ‘fit to plead’ he can then be tried in the normal way (although the sentence is effectively the same).

*Pritchard was found unfit to stand trial and was locked up ‘during His Majesty’s Pleasure’ (His being William IV’s). The judge in R v Pritchard said he had adapted his three points from a similar case, R v Dyson, a few years earlier. Esther Dyson, 26, was accused of murdering her newborn baby daughter by cutting the infant’s head off with a knife at her home in Eccleshill, West Yorkshire. Dyson was both deaf and mute and unable to read or write. According to a report in the York Herald for 26 March 1831:

In consequence of the prisoner labouring under the infirmity of being born deaf and dub, the greatest interest was excited and the galleries were crowded on the opening of court… She is rather tall, and of slender make. She has light hair and complexion, and of rather a pleasing and pensive cast of feature. She was dressed in a coloured silk bonnet, a light calico printed dress, and a red cloth cloak. She had the appearance of a respectable female in the lower walks of life.

The jury found she was ‘mute by the Visitation of God’ and could not understand the trial (even if she knew right from wrong).

CSI London: Bugs and Bodies

When the body of Leah Questin was found in a suitcase on farmland in Kent in September 2009, Metropolitan Police officers investigating her murder took a tip from CSI’s Gil Grissom and his fascination for bugs.

The activity of Blowflies and their eggs at the site of the corpse was crucial in working out approximately when Leah died. In this case it was some 12 days earlier. As a result the officers could focus on a narrower timeframe when it came to collecting crucial evidence including CCTV footage and mobile phone use and prioritising lines of enquiry.

It soon became clear that someone had been using Leah’s phone and withdrawing large sums of money from her account. Detectives quickly focused on the man she had recently met through the dating section of the Gumtree website: Clinton Bailey.

Bailey had killed the 37 year-old nurse after inviting her to his home in Brockley, southeast London, on 12 September 2009. And although the decomposition of her body prevented pathologists from working out the case of death, there was enough evidence to prove it was murder rather than accidental death.

The following year Bailey was jailed for life with a minimum of 30 years before parole.

This study of insects in connection with crime – forensic entomology – gained greater recognition thanks to the lead character in the US TV series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Gil Grissom’s fascination with bugs may have been creepy, but it often cracked a case that had foiled the human members of his team.

Forensic entomology can not only estimate the time since death, it can also provide evidence as to whether a victim has been stabbed or shot, whether their body has been moved from another location and the type of that location and whether there was a longer period of neglect or abuse before death.

Samples taken from insects that have fed on a body can also indicate what substances were present if the remains have decomposed too much to be analysed.

The insects in question include flies, beetles, bees, wasps, ants, butterflies and moths. The most commonly used by forensic entomologists are blowflies, otherwise known as bluebottles and greenbottles. Blowflies are generally the first to arrive at a dead body and provide the most accurate means to estimate the minimum period since death.

After the eggs are laid by the female blowflies, they hatch into tiny larvae about a millimetre long which grow into maggots to feed on the body before moving away to turn into adult flies, leaving behind a brown case

The time intervals between each stage, and the size of the larvae allow the scientist to estimate the minimum time since death. However, when the body is placed in a zip-up bag – as in the case of Leah Questin – this timeframe is disrupted.

It was this issue which led MSc student Poulomi Bhadra to carry out a three-month experiment titled ‘Factors influencing accessibility of bodies to blowflies’ to determine how what delay can be caused by physical barriers like zip-up bags.

Chicken liver was placed in zipped containers of varying types and exposed to flies both in the laboratory and outdoors.

Wildlife garden set up experiment — Slideshow: Forensic Entomology at the Metropolitan Police

Commenting on her study, Poulomi Bhadra said: ‘The research itself has been so interesting; we have obtained some surprising results so far and there is much more to investigate.’

Her study is one of more than 100 research projects which have been carried out as part of the Metropolitan Police’s partnership with King’s College London since 2001.

No doubt her findings will be of use to the Met’s Evidence Recovery Unit and its staff of more than 100 forensic scientists and 400 crime scene examiners, who together investigate more than 11,000 crime scenes every month – that’s well over 132,000 a year.

The Unit is also responsible for blood pattern analysis, shoeprints, fingerpint enhancement, fibre analysis, crime reconstructions and DNA sampling.

The Turkish Gang War

The gang-related revenge killing or ‘tit for tat’ feud accounts for a very small proportion of murders in London. It is however one of the most disturbing, conjuring up echoes of the American mafia as represented by The Godfather and other films.

This type of murder appears to flourish when when those responsible seem to be getting away with it. The intended victims or targets seek revenge outside of the justice system and potential ‘hitmen’ are emboldened by the failure of detectives to solve a case.

The worst recent example is the ‘war’ between two gangs in north London, the Hackney Turks (Bombacilar) and the Tottenham Turks (Tottenham Boys). Between March 2009 and April 2013, five men were shot dead. Although most of the victims were members of the two gangs, one of them was entirely innocent.

Strikingly, none of the ‘hitmen’ who fired the shots were brought to justice until July 2014 (see below). Up until then, any convictions were restricted to the co-conspirators who enable the gunmen to carry out the murders: getaway drivers, spotters etc.

Although there have been previous incidents involving the two gangs, prosecutors have traced the feud back to a brawl at the Manor Club in Finsbury Park, north London, on 24 January 2009.

That night Kemal Armagan, the leader of the Hackney Turks, was injured in the fight and vowed to kill anyone who attacked him, including Mehmet Senpalit, a Tottenham Turk.

The feud that followed was described in court by Edward Brown QC in this way:

This feud has resulted over the last few years in murder, attempted murder, beatings, threats and damage to shops and the like belonging to those perceived to be associated to one gang or the other. It has therefore been a bloody and lethal campaign by each side. From relatively minor origins, this feud became a dreadful sequence of revenge attacks – not just a beating here or a punch there, but determined killings and attempts to kill.

A brief timeline:

8 March 2009: Kemal Armagan’s brother Ali Armagan is shot and injured, along with fellow Bombacilar Kenan Aydogdu.
22 March 2009: Ahmet Paytak, 50, is shot dead at Euro Food and Wines in Hornsey Road, Holloway, a store owned by Mehmet Senpalit. Kemal Armagan, who fled the UK shortly afterwards, is believed to have ordered the hit.
2 October 2009: Oktay Erbasli, a 23 year-old Tottenham Turk member, is shot and killed while driving in Tottenham.
5 October 2009: Cem Duzgun, a 21 year-old Hackney Turk member, is shot dead at a social club in Upper Clapton Road.
15 August 2010: An attempt to kill Kenan Aydogdu, a close friend of Ali Armagan.
1 February 2012: Ali Armagan, 32, is shot dead in his car near Turnpike Lane tube station. Kemal Eren, the leader of the Tottenham Turks, is believed to be responsible.
1 December 2012: Kemal Eren is shot and seriously injured in Elbistan, Turkey.
18 April 2013: Zafer Eren, 34, Kemal Eren’s brother, is shot dead in Southgate.

UPDATE: In July 2014 Jamie Marsh-Smith was jailed for at least 38 years for the murder of Zafer Eren. The judge John Bevan QC said: “The use of the streets of this city for fighting a Medieval turf war using hired hands as hit-men is as intolerable as it is unacceptable.”

Off the Map: The case of Dean Reddy

We added the case of 25 year-old Dean Reddy after detectives arrested his father on suspicion of murder.

Since then police have said they are no longer treating the death as suspicious and revealed that further tests established the cause of death was ‘sudden adult death syndrome’.

Here is the case page as it read before deletion:

Dean Reddy, 30, died after being found unconscious at a flat in Mill Hill, northwest London, on 23 February 2013.
Police were called to the address in Bittacy Hill following reports of a disturbance at around 11pm. Mr Reddy was pronounced dead at 11.51pm.
His 57 year-old father, who had suffered cuts to his face and neck, was arrested at the scene on suspicion of murder and later released on bail until April.
Following further investigation, detectives from the Homicide and Serious Crime Command decided the death was no longer suspicious. No further action was taken.
murdermap

The Fall in Violent Crime and Murder

The release of the ‘UK Peace Index‘ (pdf link) has again highlighted the decline in violent crime (including murder) since 2003. “This is the fastest decline in violence of any country in Europe,” the report concludes.

It notes that the homicide rate (murder, manslaughter and infanticide) has halved over the last ten years to 1 per 100,000.

The bad news is that London scores badly with the capital’s boroughs occupying the top 17 ‘least peaceful areas’ of the UK – with Lewisham at the top. See Murder Britain – How does your area compare (Indy Voices).

But the cause of this decrease in crime and murder over the past decade is still unclear (fall in UK crime baffles experts) – particularly as the fall has continued in the face of a major recession. The explanations have varied from the reduction in the use of lead in paint and petrol) to cultural changes.

Here are some of the suggested reasons (feel free to add more in the comments):

A ‘symptom of a new morality‘ as people become less tolerant of criminal behaviour.
Lead poisoning. ‘Studies between cities, states and nations show that the rise and fall in crime follows, with a roughly 20-year lag, the rise and fall in the exposure of infants to trace quantities of lead.’
The decline in illegal drug use, particularly among the young. Drugs play a part both in petty crime (shoplifting etc to get money to feed the habit) and in violent crime (disputes between drug dealers / turf wars etc).
Legalised Abortion (The Donohue-Levitt hypothesis) – It is argued that unwanted children are more likely to become criminals.
Feminism – ‘Strong, autonomous feminist movements were the first to articulate the issue of violence against women and the key catalysts for government action, with other organizations sidelining issues perceived as being only important to women.‘
Policing – the targeting of specific types of homicide and violent crime, such as teenage knife crime (which reached a height in around 2007), gang violence (Operation Trident). In a recent statement, the Met highlighted its ‘series of high visibility ‘Big Wing’ operations engaging staff right across the MPS in joint action to target specific areas of crime, ranging from car crime to burglary.’ The ‘detection rate’ for homicide (number of cases where a suspect is charged) has remained high, meaning killers are less likely to get away with it. Improvements in technology (e.g. DNA, CCTV, mobile phones) also make it easier for police to identify suspects, resulting in more convictions and fewer unsolved cases.
Harsher sentencing – The 2003 Criminal Justice Act brought in set ‘tariffs’ or ‘minimum terms’ for life sentences, ranging from 15 years to whole life. For example, gun murders have a starting point of 30 years. In 2010, the minimum term for some knife murders rose from 15 years to 25 years.
The internet – are we more content with our lives due to social media? Perhaps young people are now too busy on their iPhones and game consoles to become involved in criminal behaviour. (On the other hand, mobile phone thefts/robberies have increased massively)
Improvements in medical care – see our blog on Emergency Medicine and the murder rate
Dodgy statistics – Are the police ‘cooking the books’ under pressure to beat targets? (This seems much more unlikely in the case of homicide – a crime that is harder to conceal).

So will it last? Some fear that the effects of the recession will result in rise in homicide (even if it hasn’t happened yet).

The latest homicide figures for London do show a slight increase for the financial year 2012/13 (106) compared to 2011/12 (103), with the lowest 12 month rolling figure being achieved in the summer of 2012 (96).

What happens next may give us a better indication of the factors behind the recent decrease in homicide and violent crime.