R v Robert Brown

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

On 31 May 2024 in the Crown Court at Luton, the applicant (now aged 40) was convicted by the jury of murder. On 7 June 2024 he was sentenced by the trial judge, His Honour Judge Hillen, to life imprisonment, with a minimum term of 19 years and 161 days. The appellant had previously pleaded guilty to a second count of obstructing a coroner in the exercise of their duty. For that offence there was a concurrent sentence of 4 years' imprisonment.

Trial counsel lodged grounds of appeal against conviction which the Single Judge was satisfied were not arguable. The applicant is no longer represented and this is a non-counsel application. No new grounds of appeal have been lodged but the applicant has written two letters to the Criminal Appeal Office, making various observations on the case.

The first letter, received on 25 April 2025, ran to five manuscript pages; the second letter received on 7 August 2025 made some brief further observations and asked that the court be sure to consider his previous letter as well. We have considered both these letters carefully.

We need not recite the facts of the case at any great length because they are set out very fully in the Criminal Appeal Office summary which the applicant has been provided with.

The case concerned the murder of Victoria Greenwood. She was a 41-year-old sex worker who was known to the applicant. She was a heavy user of cocaine and heroin.

The following day the applicant set about disposing of the body, concealed within a wooden cupboard unit and wrapped in plastic bags. The cupboard unit was placed in his car and two days later he drove the body to a lay-by in the countryside, poured petrol on it and set it on fire in order to destroy the evidence of what he had done.

The body was recovered in a state sufficient for the pathologist to be able to confirm on postmortem that the deceased had suffered several soft tissue injuries to her head with three underlying depressed skull fractures, one of which caused the bone to push into the brain. It was likely that she would have lost consciousness. The injuries indicated a severe impact caused by a heavy curved object such as a hammer. She had also suffered deep bruising to her back, to her right shoulder and to her left shoulder blade. The cause of death was given as blunt force trauma and mixed drug intoxication. It was not possible to separate out those two mechanisms or to say which was more important.

The defence case was a denial that the applicant intended to kill her or cause her grievous bodily harm. The applicant accepted using force on her and agreed that she could have incurred the head injury at his flat but he was not aware of inflicting the injuries to her head. If he did cause those injuries it was accidental or was done in self-defence. It was part of the defence case that the jury could not be sure that the injuries to her head made at least a significant contribution to her death.

The defence case was that following sexual intercourse with the deceased the applicant discovered that she was stealing his watch, which led to an argument in which she was violent towards him, hitting him in the face with a bottle. He had blacked out. When he came to a couple of hours later, he realised she was dead. He panicked and set about disposing of the body.

The first ground of appeal relates to a ruling the judge made at the start of the case, on the prosecution’s application to adduce evidence of things said and done by the applicant, of a misogynistic and misanthropic nature in the days and weeks leading up to the fatal events. The prosecution argued that the jury were entitled to know the thoughts of the applicant towards women and other people in general as informing his alleged actions. The evidence consisted of comments made to various colleagues, to his brother, to a friend and to another possible sex worker.

The prosecution argued that this was evidence "to do with the facts of the offence" within section 98 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. Alternatively, it was admissible as evidence of bad character under section 101(1)(d) of the Act. The defence opposed the application, arguing that the evidence was not relevant and admissible and that, even if it was, it should be excluded under section 78 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 or under section 101(3) of the 2003 Act.

The judge gave a careful written ruling. He identified the principles which applied. He considered that some of the evidence was admissible but only that which was truly relevant and close in time to the events alleged. We need not go into further detail. Suffice it to say the judge admitted some of the evidence the prosecution sought to adduce and refused to admit other parts of that evidence.

We agree with the analysis of the Single Judge in refusing leave. It was relevant for the jury to know that in the days and hours leading up to the fatal incident the applicant was preoccupied with death, killing and violence. On the day of the death he had messaged one witness about "immortality", "sacrifice" and "death". It is not arguable that the probative value of the messaging was outweighed by its prejudicial effect. The limited evidence that the judge admitted was plainly relevant in assisting the jury to gain knowledge of the applicant's thinking in the days leading up to the killing. We are satisfied that this ground is not arguable.

The second ground of appeal arises from the same ruling of the judge in relation to the material in question. It is said that the material should have been admitted, if at all, as bad character evidence, with an appropriate direction to the jury accordingly. The prosecution argued that the messages were not evidence of bad character and were admissible under section 98 because they had "to do with" the alleged facts of the offence. Evidence of what the applicant said to other people prior to the killing was highly relevant to the jury's consideration of the lawfulness of the subsequent fatal armed violence used by the applicant, and relevant to his intention when he used that violence. His defence was that the deceased had started the violence by attacking him. Had the jury not been told about these comments that the applicant had previously made in the days and weeks leading up to the killing, the jury would have been given an inaccurate impression that the killing occurred in isolation without any prior contemplation by the applicant of death or of wanting to kill, or of violence towards women during sex.

Again, we agree with the analysis of the Single Judge, in refusing leave, that that this was plainly evidence that fell within section 98. There would have been no rational basis for a bad character direction to the effect that the jury could not convict wholly or mainly on this evidence going to his state of mind. The judge's summary of the messages in his summing-up was thorough and balanced and cannot be faulted. We are satisfied that this ground is not arguable.

The third ground of appeal is that the judge was wrong to refuse the half-time submission by the defence that there was no case to answer. It was argued that causation of death had not been made out and/or that the evidence was so weak that a reasonable jury properly directed could not convict upon it. The defence submitted that there was insufficient evidence on which a reasonable jury, properly directed, could conclude that the blunt force trauma to the deceased's head caused her death as opposed to her death being the result of the substantial amount of heroin and cocaine that she had consumed. The defence relied on the fact that the pathologist, Dr Chapman, could not exclude the possibility (albeit he described it as remote) that she died from the drugs alone. Dr Chapman was unable to quantify the relevant contributions of the blunt force trauma and the drug intoxication so, it was argued, the jury could not be sure that the head trauma made at least a significant contribution to death.

The prosecution submitted that causation was properly proved and that there was plainly a case to answer. The pathology evidence was that the deceased suffered injury to the left side of her head with underlying skull fractures. There were seven separate injuries in this region with three underlying suppressed skull fractures. The fractures suggested causation by severe impact with a heavy blunt object. By contrast, in allegedly resisting the deceased’s violence towards him the applicant had only suffered a black eye and some modest scratches and bruises.

Again, the judge gave a comprehensive and carefully analysed written ruling on the submission of no case to answer. He identified correctly the principles which applied and set out the elements of the prosecution's circumstantial case. The test for causation was whether the applicant's unlawful acts had made a significant contribution to death even though her ingestion of drugs may also have contributed concurrently. The judge set out carefully the evidence of Dr Chapman. He referred to the guidance given by this Court in R v Gian [2009] EWCA Crim 2553, that in such a situation juries were required to consider expert evidence in the context of all other relevant evidence and make judgments based upon realistic possibilities. The mere fact that as a matter of scientific certainty it was not possible to rule out a proposition consistent with innocence did not justify withdrawing the case from the jury.

Having regard to the timing of relevant events and the pathologist's evidence that there was a series of blows causing punched out skull fractures, the judge was satisfied that the jury could conclude as a matter of common sense that the death was, at least to a significant degree, a consequence of the injuries inflicted by the applicant. As the judge put it:

We agree with the very full analysis of the Single Judge in refusing leave on this ground. In his ruling the judge identified the correct legal principles and applied them. His conclusions in applying the half-time test were evidentially grounded and reasonably open to him. The judge understood and made plain in his ruling that a theoretical and unlikely possibility of one possible contributory cause being the sole true cause is usually insufficient for a successful submission of no case to answer. That was a correct determination as a matter of law and a conclusion which was fully justified on the evidence. We are satisfied that this ground of appeal is not arguable.

We have studied the judge's written directions to the jury and his summing-up. They are a model of clarity and fairness. No complaint has been made or could be made about them.

Finally, we return to the observations made by the applicant in his two letters to the Court following the refusal of leave. They amount to the applicant's own commentary on the grounds put forward by trial counsel and on the case generally as he sees it. There is nothing in those letters which gives rise to any further ground of appeal that might be arguable, even if put into proper form.

For all these reasons, we are quite satisfied that there is no arguable ground of appeal. It is not arguable that the applicant's conviction is unsafe or that his trial was in any way unfair.

Accordingly, this renewed application is refused.