R v Brian Robert Saunders

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

There are a number of grounds of appeal against conviction. They have been set out, first of all, in the original grounds dated in December 2023. Further grounds were sent in April 2025 in two batches, 24 April and then 30 April. On 29 November 2023, in the Crown Court at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, following a trial before HHJ Mallett and a jury, the applicant, who was then aged 52, was convicted of one count of causing grievous bodily harm with intent. On 24 January 2024, he was sentenced to a sentence of imprisonment for 3 years and 9 months. There is no issue on the sentence. The renewed application relates to conviction.

So far as the background is concerned, there was a dispute between neighbours. Wendy Douglas (“the complainant”) who is retired and 68 years of age and William and Marion Saunders, who were the parents of the applicant. Matters came to a head on 12 June 2021, when Ms Douglas was pruning plants that had overgrown from her neighbours' garden into hers. There was an exchange of words between her and her neighbours. Then about 20 minutes later she heard a car pulling up and assumed, correctly as it turned out, that was Mr Saunders visiting his parents. Then she heard Mr Saunders saying he wanted a word with her. At first she ignored him but he became angry and repeated what he was saying. There was then an altercation between the two of them.

Ms Douglas was punched repeatedly in the face, and we have seen the photographs of some of the injuries that she suffered. Her case was that assault was carried out by the applicant and the jury accepted that. Mr Saunders's case was that this was caused, first of all, by a trip over a dog where Ms Douglas had fallen forward, and that then there had been a "set up", as he put it, in the case where Ms Douglas had effectively blamed him for her injuries.

It is relevant to note that there was expert evidence showing that Mr Saunders's case was inconsistent with the injuries that Ms Douglas had suffered and that is relevant because of the grounds that the applicant has run. First of all, he complained that his legal team had failed to call expert evidence from Dr Bolton, who had been instructed on behalf of Mr Saunders but who was not available at the trial. In fact, there was a joint statement from the expert showing that there was no material difference between the experts, making it clear that Mr Saunders case was unlikely to be true, not impossible to be true but unlikely to be true, and therefore the expert evidence and the failure to call the expert evidence took the matter no further forward.

Complaints were made about judicial misdirections on the limitations of expert evidence but the judge gave perfectly proper directions in conventional terms. A complaint was made about judicial conduct and apparent bias but it is not obvious from the summing-up or any of the material that we have seen that the judge did anything other than sum-up fairly the respective cases to the jury.

Mr Saunders also complained about: the procedural irregularities during the trial but there were no irregularities that have affected the safety of the verdict; and an evidential imbalance. We can see no evidential imbalance. The prosecution called evidence, including evidence from those who had witnessed the incident and called the police and it was then said that there were a whole series of cumulative failures which made the conviction unsafe. Again, we can see no evidence of any failures let alone cumulative failures which have rendered the conviction unsafe.

We should just deal with one further point that the applicant Mr Saunders has made in his most recent complaint, which was to the effect that on the video evidence there was a statement to the effect that: "I didn't see him but two young lads saw him drive off" from one of the witnesses. A description was given. The complete answer to this point which was raised only in written submissions is that this was not a case of any disputed identification. What was apparent was that there was an altercation (we use that term neutrally) between Ms Douglas and Mr Saunders and it was also apparent that Ms Douglas suffered serious injuries during the course of that altercation. There was simply an issue about whether or not Mr Saunders had done what Ms Douglas said he had done.

We have looked at all of the grounds that the applicant has advanced. We have carefully considered the summing-up, the complaints made against counsel by Mr Saunders and the response from counsel to those complaints. We can see nothing that would render this conviction unsafe. So for all those reasons, we refuse the renewed application for leave to appeal against conviction.