R v Bukari Mohammed Abdi

This is a renewed application for leave to appeal against conviction following refusal by the single judge.

On 14 March 2024 in the Crown Court at Snaresbrook after a trial presided over by Mr Recorder Nigel Sangster KC the applicant, aged 31, was convicted by the jury of an offence of street robbery committed in February 2022. He was sentenced the following day to a term of two years' imprisonment.

The applicant was unrepresented during the trial which began on Monday 11 March. That came about because an application to change solicitors had been refused on 7 March by another judge. The background to that was that over the previous 12 months leading up to the trial the applicant had been represented by no fewer than four different firms of solicitors in succession. In each case the solicitors had withdrawn owing to a breakdown in their relationship with the applicant and legal aid had been transferred to another firm.

In February, a few weeks before the trial, the fourth and final firm of solicitors informed the court that their relationship with the applicant had broken down. They said he had refused to cooperate with them and he had been abusive towards members of staff. This time no new firm was identified. The judge who dealt with the matter on 7 March did not consider that yet another transfer of legal aid was justified. The first ground of appeal is that the judge had been wrong to refuse the transfer.

The applicant attended court unrepresented for the start of his trial. The allegation was very straightforward. The prosecution case was that the applicant and another man, Jibiril Ibrahim Jama, had acted jointly to rob the complainant of his mobile phone. Jama had pleaded guilty to the robbery. The offence took place in the street at 4 o'clock in the morning outside the complainant's home address. The complainant, who was a university student, had stepped out into the street to smoke a cigarette. He was approached by the two defendants who believed or pretended to believe that the complainant wanted to buy drugs from them.

The upshot was that when the complainant made it clear he had no such wish, both men searched the complainant's pockets and took out his mobile phone. Both men were standing very close to him. They performed an exchange of hands, like a magic trick, and made out they had not taken his phone at all. When he demanded his phone back the applicant said: "Don't touch me or I'll smack you." The two men walked off with the phone.

The matter was reported to the police. The complainant identified the applicant as one of the two men. The phone was found in the applicant's possession when he was searched on arrest soon afterwards.

The fourth set of solicitors had served a detailed defence statement on the applicant's behalf setting out his case. He admitted that he and his co-defendant had an encounter with the complainant but he suggested that it was the complainant who had approached them to buy drugs. The co-defendant had taken the phone. There was no plan to do so and the applicant had tried to stop him.

We have the benefit of a very detailed respondent's notice settled by prosecuting counsel explaining how the trial developed. The prosecution applied under section 36 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 to prohibit the applicant, who was representing himself in the trial, from cross-examining the complainant. The judge granted the application and adjourned the case to the following day so that independent counsel could be appointed by the court to conduct the cross-examination.

An advocate was found, Mr Poulier of the Public Defender's Office. He had a conference with the applicant at court to take instructions and decide what questions to ask. However the applicant informed the court that he did not wish Mr Poulier to cross-examine the complainant and he maintained that stance. In accordance with the requirements of the Criminal Procedure Rules the judge warned the applicant that if there was no cross-examination of the complainant, the effect of not putting his case would be tacit acceptance of the complainant's evidence. The applicant remained obdurate. In the result there was no cross-examination on behalf of the applicant. However, to provide some balance, as the judge put it, and in the interests of a fair trial, the judge himself asked a few questions of the complainant that he thought the applicant might have wanted to ask.

At the conclusion of the complainant's evidence, the applicant raised objections to the fairness of the proceedings. He wanted to make an opening speech. The judge explained that he could not do so until the end of the prosecution case, and that if he was not proposing to call any witnesses apart from himself he was in any event not permitted to make an opening speech. The applicant also wanted to read or refer to the complainant's witness statement. The judge explained that this would not be permitted as any such references should have been put to the complainant in cross-examination.

This was all taking place on 12 March, the second day of the trial. The applicant informed the judge that he did not propose to attend court the following day or for the remainder of the trial.

The next morning, 13 March, the applicant refused to leave his cell at the prison where he was remanded saying that he was not having a fair trial. The jury were sent away for the day. The judge very sensibly produced a document for the applicant setting out in detail precisely what had happened at the various stages of the trial to date and warning the applicant that if he refused to attend next day the trial would proceed in his absence as he would be voluntarily absenting himself. The document stressed that the jury would be warned that the applicant's absence was not an admission of guilt, but his absence would deprive him of the opportunity to give evidence himself and the prosecution case would therefore go unanswered. The judge took pains to ensure that the document reached the applicant at the prison.

The applicant did not attend the following day. The judge was satisfied that he was voluntarily absenting himself and acceded to the prosecution's application that the trial should proceed without him. That is what happened.

The evidence having concluded, the judge summed up the case with commendable brevity. His directions to the jury were clear and helpful and his summary of the evidence fair and accurate. He gave the jury the appropriate warning that they should not take as any admission of guilt the fact that the applicant had not attended court for the last two days, or that he had chosen to represent himself, or that he had declined the services of a court appointed advocate to cross-examine the complainant. The judge made it clear in his directions that the simple issue for the jury was whether the applicant and his co-defendant were "in it together". The jury convicted unanimously in a matter of minutes.

The applicant has continued to represent himself. His grounds of appeal are extensive and we do not propose to mention every point raised, although we have considered them all.

The first ground is that the court unreasonably refused to transfer legal aid to a new firm of solicitors. There is no merit in that ground. It was the fourth time that he had fallen out with his solicitors. The judge was fully entitled to refuse a transfer to a fifth new firm in circumstances where his existing solicitors told the court that he refused to cooperate with them and had been verbally abusive to them.

The second ground is that he was wrongly prevented from cross-examining the complainant. There is no merit in this ground. The judge was fully justified in granting the section 36 application and an independent advocate was appointed by the court whom the applicant refused to accept.

The third ground is that Mr Poulier, the court appointed advocate, was not focused on the case, slow at taking instructions and his proposed questions were not in the applicant's interests. There is no merit in this ground. In the document he prepared for the applicant the judge noted that Mr Poulier had told him in court that he had prepared the case, read the defence statement, prepared his own questions and amended and supplemented them following discussions with the applicant. There is nothing whatsoever to indicate that Mr Poulier was incompetent. The respondent's notice confirms that he appeared professional, competent and well-equipped to deal with the issues.

The fourth ground is that on the first day of the trial the judge prevented the applicant from speaking when he tried to do so. There is no merit in this ground. We have already recited what happened after the conclusion of the complainant's evidence, as set out in the document the judge prepared for the applicant. The judge was correct in law to answer the applicant's request as he did. The applicant had no entitlement to address the jury at that stage, or to open his case to the jury in due course as he was calling no witness but himself.

The fifth ground is that the prosecution misled the jury on the facts by stating that the two defendants were blaming each other, by attributing particular acts to the defendants collectively and by referring to the applicant incorrectly by the name "Mohammed". There is no merit in this ground. The prosecution did not suggest that the defendants were blaming each other. The commission of collective acts was the essence of the allegation of the joint enterprise case against the applicant. Mohammed was one of the applicant's names. The indictment correctly stated that his first name was Bukari. Any error in relation to his name was unintentional and cannot affect the safety of the conviction.

The sixth ground complains about the conduct of the fourth set of solicitors, saying that they failed to attend court and refused to attend video conferences. It is suggested that it was only when the applicant initiated a further transfer of legal aid to new solicitors that the fourth solicitors said they were no longer prepared to act, falsely claiming that his conduct was aggressive and unacceptable. There is no merit in this ground. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the breakdown of the relationship between the applicant and the solicitors, the fact is that there was such a breakdown. The judge was rightly not prepared to grant yet another transfer of legal aid following yet another breakdown of the solicitor/client relationship.

For all these reasons, like the single judge, we are quite satisfied that there is no arguable ground of appeal. It is not arguable that the conviction is unsafe or that the trial was in any way unfair. Indeed the judge is to be commended on the careful way he approached and dealt with the various issues which arose.

Accordingly, this renewed application for leave to appeal is refused.