R v Yeervesh Lahoora

On 14 March 2025, following a trial in the Crown Court at Chelmsford, the applicant was convicted of one offence of wounding with intent, contrary to section 18 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 (count 4), and one offence of violent disorder, contrary to section 2(1) of the Public Order Act 1986 (count 7).

The applicant seeks leave to appeal against his conviction, arguing that the judge wrongfully refused to adjourn the trial to allow him the opportunity to adduce expert evidence that he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (“PTSD”). His application has been referred by the single judge to the full court in circumstances in which the applicant is seeking to adduce fresh evidence in the form of an expert report addressing his PTSD by way of an application under section 23 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1968.

The trial arose from a violent street fight which took place on Sun Street, Waltham Abbey, at just after midday on 4 May 2024. CCTV and mobile phone footage, which all the members of the court have watched, captured a violent clash which featured Mushraf Moalim on one side and the applicant on the other. The applicant was in the company of two other men, referred to as “Green Top Man” (“GT”) and “Black Top Man” (“BT”). Their identities are not known and they have been given those descriptions by reference to the CCTV footage.

The applicant arrived in the company of the other two men at a café. They were followed by Moalim when they left. Moalim approached the applicant and the others from behind, as can be seen in the CCTV footage, and sprayed sulphuric acid in the direction of the applicant and the others. The CCTV footage suggests that most of the acid landed on clothing, or missed the intended target altogether.

After the acid attack, the applicant, GT and BT all turned around to Moalim. The prosecution alleges that the violence which followed exceeded the permissible scope of lawful self-defence. Moalim was pushed to the ground, punched and kicked. The applicant can be seen on the CCTV footage trying to punch Moalim with a knuckle duster. BT can be seen in possession of a knife. At the end of the violence, when Moalim was lying prostrate on the ground, the applicant pulled down his trousers and exposed his genitals.

Moalim was left incapacitated by the assault, with two stab wounds to the back, one to the leg, a fractured jaw and a fractured eye socket.

Moalim was charged with the acid attack, and the applicant with offences relating to the subsequent violence inflicted on Moalim.

Moalim’s defence, as set out in his Defence Case Statement, was self-defence and a denial that he knew that the liquid sprayed was acid. His case was that he thought that it was simply an irritant of some kind. The Defence Case Statement referred to a previous attack he had suffered, which had made him “extremely wary of his environment”. That statement was served on 7 November 2024. Moalim obtained a psychiatric report which suggested that the earlier attack had caused him PTSD and might have affected his behaviour during the incident in question. That report was obtained on 11 February 2025, and an addendum to it served on 6 March 2025.

At trial Moalim gave evidence that he had been phoned that day by someone who said that they wished to buy cannabis. He said that he was suspicious of the call and thought that the meeting might by a set up, and that a friend had recommend he take along a bottle which contained what he understood to be some form of irritant.

After the cannabis deal had passed off without incident, Moalim said that he had gone to the café for something to eat, where GT threatened him and invited him to come outside. He claimed to have seen a knife in GT’s waistband and to have squirted the liquid in an act of pre-emptive self-defence. His case was that either he was correct in that three men, including the applicant, were about to attack him, or that due to his PTSD he had mistakenly and genuinely formed that belief. He relied upon his expert psychiatric evidence in that latter context.

The applicant’s defence was also that he had acted in self-defence. His Defence Case Statement said that he had difficulty in running away because of a tendon injury, and that having been attacked by Moalim, he felt that “the only choice [he] had was to fight back to defend [him]self”. He said that at some point he became aware of BT and that BT and GT had joined him, but that he was unaware of what they were doing. He said that he had reacted instinctively in a state of fear, no doubt heightened by previous trauma. His defence was that throughout the incident he was focused on defending himself and was unaware of the fact that knives had been produced, that Moalim had been stabbed, or that Moalim had been seriously injured. That statement was served on 31 January 2025. It will be noted that it denies both involvement in a co-ordinated group attack and knowledge of the presence and use of a knife.

The applicant also faced charges for possession of Class A drugs with intent to supply, which arose from drugs found in his possession on 21 May 2024. The solicitors who acted for him in the wounding matter also acted for him in the drugs matter. They obtained a psychiatric report on 28 October 2024 to support a defence that the applicant was a victim of modern slavery who had been exploited into involvement in the drugs offences. That report was obtained from a Dr Rao who interviewed the applicant on 14 October 2024 (“the first Rao report”).

The first Rao report recounted the applicant’s family and personal history. This included being the victim of an attack by a group in 2017, which led to him leaving this country to go and live in Mauritius, his return to the country in 2019 when he was stabbed while engaging in a cannabis transaction, and a further stabbing in 2021. The report recorded the applicant’s account that he was still experiencing bad dreams about the attacks, cold sweats and flashbacks; that he was always anxious, hypervigilant and hyperalert; and that he suffered from sleep disturbance, all of which had started after the 2019 attack and had worsened after the 2021 attack. Dr Rao expressed the view that the conditions described were consistent with a PTSD diagnosis. He expressed the opinion that the applicant was a vulnerable person, likely to be exploited; that the PTSD exacerbated his vulnerability; and that his vulnerability made him liable to be exploited by drug dealers.

The prosecution opening note, dated 18 November 2024, was filed well in advance of trial because the applicant had brought an application to dismiss. It was the prosecution case, as set out in that note, that the incident involved the applicant and two unknown males attacking Mr Moalim with a knife, which was used to inflict at least two stab wounds, and a knuckleduster.

On 28 January 2025, the applicant had his first conference with trial counsel, shortly after trial counsel had been instructed. Counsel recommended that an expert report be obtained addressing the significance of the applicant’s PTSD on the issue of self-defence. However, we accept that, at that point, a further report from Dr Rao could not be obtained in time for the trial both because of difficulties in organising funding, and in securing time for Dr Rao to conduct a further interview with the applicant.

On 27 February 2025, the applicant’s solicitors wrote to the court asking for an urgent listing. They wrote the following day seeking an adjournment in order to adduce expert evidence that the applicant was suffering from PTSD and which was said to be relevant to his assessment of the level of force which it was appropriate to deploy in response to the acid attack.

That request was renewed orally at the start of the trial on 3 March. At that point, both defendants had custody time limits due to expire on 10 March, and nine prosecution witnesses requested by the defendants were lined up to give evidence. The adjournment application was opposed by Moalim who was being held on remand.

The judge refused to grant the adjournment. He proceeded on the basis, as we do, that the applicant had been correctly diagnosed with PTSD, but he reached the conclusion that an adjournment was not necessary, given the nature of the issues in the case and the applicant’s defence. He was not persuaded that such evidence would assist the jury on the issues it had to decide. In particular, he noted that it was the applicant’s case that he was unaware that BT had produced and used a knife. He was not saying that he believed the use of a knife was a proportionate response to the acid attack.

At trial Moalim gave evidence that as he was walking out of the café he began to have flashbacks to the 2020 stabbing and thought that he was going to be stabbed. He said that he decided not to stay in the café because on the previous occasion he had been attacked, his attackers had come into a shop and attacked him there. Moalim was permitted to call his psychiatric expert evidence.

The applicant adduced evidence himself of the prior stabbings and said that they had made him paranoid, wary and cautious. His evidence was summed up to the jury in the context of the applicant’s evidence that he was unable to run away and by way of his explanation for carrying a knuckleduster. The applicant said that he had only met GT on a couple of occasions and did not trust him, and that he had met BT only once before. The jury were invited by the judge to test that evidence by reference to the CCTV footage.

The section 18 offence with which the applicant was charged was that together with another he had been guilty of the offence of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. In his summing up, the judge explained that this involved an allegation of joint participation in the attack of Moalim with GT and BT, in the course of which Moalim had been stabbed. The judge directed the jury that, in reality, their verdict on the violent disorder count would be the same as on the wounding count.

On 14 March 2025, the applicant was convicted of the two counts which are the subject of this application. Moalim was acquitted on all counts.

On 14 March, the applicant’s solicitors obtained a further report from Dr Rao addressing the issue of the applicant’s PTSD in the context of this offence. That report (“the second Rao report”) is the subject of the fresh evidence application before us today. It followed a further interview of the applicant by Dr Rao on 10 March 2025. The second Rao report was not deployed at the sentencing hearing on 27 May 2025, at which the applicant was sentenced to 30 months’ imprisonment for the section 18 offence, with concurrent sentences for the violent disorder conviction and having an offensive weapon (an offence to which the applicant had pleaded guilty before the trial).

In his interview for the pre-sentence report, the applicant repeated his account that after Moalim had thrown the acid, he was unable to run away due to his leg injury. He repeated his assertion that he did not know what either GT or BT were doing.

The sentencing note filed on the applicant’s behalf referred to PTSD being a factor that had a nexus to the offence of carrying a knuckleduster and his actions on the day.

The applicant seeks leave to challenge his conviction on the ground that the judge was wrong to refuse an adjournment to allow the applicant the opportunity to obtain an expert psychiatric report addressing his PTSD and its implications. The applicant relies on the decision of this court in R v Press and Thompson [2013] EWCA Crim 1849.

In that case the appellant, Thompson a former soldier who had served in Afghanistan, was charged with offences under section 18, or alternatively section 20, of the 1861 Act. He advanced the defence of self-defence. One ground of appeal, raised at the instigation of the Criminal Appeal Office, was whether, and if so to what extent, expert evidence of Thompson’s post-traumatic stress disorder was relevant to the jury’s consideration of the defence of self-defence, and whether the jury was appropriately directed in that regard. The appellant had adduced evidence from Dr Anderson, a clinical psychiatrist, who concluded that Thompson was suffering from a moderate degree of PTSD, and who gave evidence that that made him hypervigilant and caused him to have a heightened awareness of potential threats. Dr Anderson expressed the view that Thompson might over-react to protect himself if threatened. One ground of appeal was that the jury had not been directed as to the impact of that evidence, or the potential impact on the defence of self-defence. The court observed at [38]:

“… Dr Anderson’s evidence that Thompson would have been hypersensitive to threatening situations was plainly relevant to the question whether he held an honest belief that he was being threatened. …”

At [39], the Court stated that this evidence was also relevant to the issue whether the appellant “honestly and instinctively thought that the force he used was necessary in defence of himself”.

The applicant in the case before us submits that Press and Thompson supports the conclusion that a mistaken belief of the scale of threat faced as a result of the effects of PTSD can inform a defendant’s threat assessment as to the level of force necessary, and he submits that the proposed psychiatric evidence was plainly relevant to that application.

Section 23(2) of the Criminal Appeal Act 1968 provides:

“The Court of Appeal shall, in considering whether to receive any evidence, have regard in particular to —

(a)

whether the evidence appears to the Court to be capable of belief;

(b)

whether it appears to the Court that the evidence may afford any ground for allowing the appeal;

(c)

whether the evidence would have been admissible in the proceedings from which the appeal lies on an issue which is the subject of the appeal; and

(d)

whether there is a reasonable explanation for the failure to adduce the evidence in those proceedings.”

We accept that the second Rao report is capable of belief. We shall also assume that there is a reasonable explanation for the failure to adduce the evidence before the judge in time for it to be heard at the trial.

The issues of whether the evidence would have been admissible before the judge and whether it may afford a ground for allowing the appeal are inherently tied up with the correctness of the judge’s decision to refuse an adjournment. For the purpose of testing those issues we will proceed on the basis that the second Rao report forms part of the material before the court.

The second Rao report, like its predecessor, is largely based upon the applicant’s narrative account provided in interview. The accounts of the applicant’s family history, the assaults of which he was a victim, and the symptoms experienced as a result are essentially the same in both reports. The section of the second Rao report setting out Dr Rao’s professional opinion provides a diagnosis of PTSD and depression, which requires treatment.

The issue of the offence and the relevance of PTSD to it is addressed in a single paragraph of the report at 14.6. It states:

“In my opinion, evidence suggests that [the applicant] knew what he was doing and whether it was wrong at the material time. He maintains that he acted in self-defence. Given his background PTSD, when under threat, he is likely to be more hyper-vigilant than a normal person. I believe he is also likely to have inflated his assessment of the degree of risk he was facing, and this assessment is likely to have impacted on the degree of force he believed necessary to defend himself.”

The brief and general terms of Dr Rao’s opinion, and the absence of any link between the diagnosis of the PTSD and any particular features of this offence and the applicant’s conduct in relation to it, are obvious.

We accept that there may be cases in which expert evidence as to a diagnosis of and the consequences of PTSD will be of potential relevance to a defence of self-defence on the issues of what threat the defendant perceived and whether the defendant honestly and instinctively thought that the force they used was necessary to defend themselves. However, the admissibility of evidence of this kind must depend on the issues in any particular case and the nature of the defence advanced, and the evidence must engage with those matters. We would refer in this regard to the decision of this court in R v Mazzer [2024] EWCA Crim 557. In that case the applicant was leaving a party and for that purpose had to pass through a crowd milling outside and believe to be hostile. He took a knife with him from the kitchen drawer and stabbed two individuals in the street. His defence was that he had taken the knife with him because he was scared, but without intending to use it. He claimed that outside, when the complainants began to run towards him, he pulled out the knife, saying “Leave me alone”. In essence, his case was that the injuries had occurred while he was wielding the knife for the purpose of scaring the boys off. He was convicted of two offences of wounding with intent. He sought leave to appeal and to adduce fresh evidence in the form of a psychologist’s report from a Professor Farrell. The thrust of that report was that the applicant was suffering from PTSD linked to a serious assault he had suffered in 2018. A first report from Professor Farrell had been relied upon at the sentencing hearing and the matters it contained were treated by the judge as a mitigating factor. The further report, provided after sentence and which was the subject of the fresh evidence application, said that PTSD would have influenced the applicant’s reactions in the circumstances of the schedule offence and “would in strong likelihood result in miscalculation of threat level, appraisal of current situation, a more heightened perception of threat which can result in more extreme reactions and engagement in safety behaviour”.

At [26] of the judgment, the Court referred to a series of decisions addressing the admissibility of expert evidence in criminal cases, culminating in a review of those cases by Baroness Carr CJ in R v Jacobs [2024] 4 WLR 8. Those cases stress the necessity for an expert report to be tethered to the evidence in the case about the events which took place, and in particular to any account given by the defendant. In Mazzer the court stated:

“27.

… it is unlikely to be helpful for a psychiatrist or a psychologist to give general evidence diagnosing a condition in a defendant saying that it was present at the time of the offence and what effects of the condition might have been without also saying how, in the opinion of the expert, that relates to accounts given by the defendant, and by any relevant witnesses, as to what took place. The report must also set out the expert’s reasons for the opinions given.”

While Mr Sergeant, who appears on behalf of the applicant, points to factual differences between the offences before the court in Mazzer and those at issue in this case, we regard Mazzer and the cases to which it refers as outlining a statement of general principle with regard to the admissibility of expert evidence in cases such as this.

In Mazzer the court observed that the applicant’s account was that he had not intended to stab anyone at all, merely to wave the knife around, but that Professor Farrell’s evidence was not tethered to that account or other evidence. The applicant’s defence was not based on a miscalculation of the threat posed to him (or to anyone else for that matter) by people in his vicinity.

Returning to the matter before us, given the timing of the adjournment application and the impact on another defendant, the witnesses and the criminal justice system, the judge was justified in carefully considering the relevance of the proposed expert evidence, which it was said an adjournment was necessary to obtain, to the issues the jury would have to decide. In our assessment, that is exactly what the judge did. In the case before us, the essence of the applicant’s defence was that he had defended himself in response to the acid attack in circumstances in which his injured leg did not permit him to run away. His case was that he was not aware of what GT and BT were doing, or the presence or use of the knife. He did not suggest that he perceived such a degree of threat that he genuinely believe that the use of a knife was necessary to defend himself, or indeed that he believe that a group attack of three on one was justified. It is clear from the jury’s conviction on the section 18 offence that they rejected the applicant’s account of how he had reacted; and there is no longer any challenge to the judge’s direction on joint enterprise.

Against that background, approaching the matter realistically, we agree with the trial judge that there was no scope for psychiatric expert evidence to assist on the key issue in this case. Indeed, as we have noted, the second Rao report is expressed in the most general of terms, and not tethered to the applicant’s account of how he acted and why. That is perhaps surprising, as the report was produced after the applicant had given his account in evidence.

Finally, in the Advice and Grounds, for understandable reasons, Mr Sergeant made something of the fact that the judge admitted the psychiatric report relied upon by Moalim. But Moalim’s case raised different issues. He had initiated the actual violence by throwing the acid. His evidence was that he did so in response to an anticipated, perceived threat of attack. He gave an account that as he was walking out of the café he began to have flashbacks to the 2020 stabbing and thought that he was going to be stabbed. It was that earlier offence and his memories of it which, he said, led him not to stay in the café, because on the previous occasion his attackers had come into a shop. The report adduced by him from Dr Deo specifically linked the scenario which Moalim said that he thought he was facing in and outside the café with the circumstances of the earlier attacks, and expressed the opinion that PTSD was a relevant factor in the judgment formed by Moalim, both in leaving the café and in throwing acid outside it. He also gave evidence of how PTSD could have impacted the scenarios visible in the CCTV footage.

It was open to the trial judge to conclude that the evidence of Moalim’s PTSD was relevant to the self-defence plea he had advanced in its specific circumstances.

By contrast, the key issue with the applicant was what level of force he was party to being used, not whether he genuinely believed that that level of force was necessary. There was no dispute that the applicant had not initiated the force, but was responding to Moalim’s attack.

For those reasons, we are satisfied that the judge was correct in his decision to refuse the adjournment. We refuse the applications both to adduce fresh evidence and for leave to appeal against conviction.