R v Vincent Joseph Morgan

The applicant is now 48. On 24 December 2024 in the Crown Court at Leeds, before HHJ Kearl ("the judge") and a jury, the applicant was convicted of murder and two counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm. On 4 December he was sentenced by the judge to imprisonment for life. The minimum term was set at 21 years less time spent on remand. Concurrent terms of 2 years 6 months were imposed on counts 2 and 3. He renews his applications for permission to appeal against both conviction and sentence following refusal by the single judge.

The applicant was a man with a history of violent offending against his female partners. We set out later in this judgment the evidence of his violence towards his previous partner, Samantha Houfe.

By 2023, the applicant was in a relationship with Lisa Welford. He was violent towards her. This led to two Domestic Violence Protection Orders ("DVPOs") in 2023 and subsequent proceedings against the applicant for breach of those orders. On 4 April 2024 Lisa called the police again, this time to complain that the applicant had pulled out her hair by grabbing her ponytail and pulling on it. She showed the police a bald patch on her head which was recorded on the constable's body worn video footage. She also reported that the applicant had assaulted her and knocked out one of her teeth in February 2024. Those allegations gave rise to counts 2 and 3 on the indictment. As a result of those allegations the police obtained another DVPO against the applicant.

On 24 April 2024, in breach of the terms of the DVPO, the applicant spent the day with Lisa Welford in York, where they consumed alcohol before travelling by bus to Malton at approximately 8.30 in the evening. They walked to the riverside and drank more alcohol. CCTV footage showed them alighting a bus at 8.30 and walking towards the river.

Sometime later, at around 11.30 pm a passerby, Amy Simpson, was returning home from work. She was walking along the riverbank. She encountered the applicant, who she knew and who was drunk and unable to stand. She assisted him on getting onto the path. The applicant told her that Lisa Welford was by the riverbank. Amy saw Lisa lying on the ground with her head closest to the river, cushioned by her elbow. Amy shouted to Lisa who responded "Where am I?" Amy was concerned that Lisa was close to the water and in danger. The applicant asked Amy if she could help, but Amy was concerned that she may be dragged in herself. She used the light on her phone camera and the applicant went down to the bank. The applicant asked Amy not to call the police.

Instead it appears Amy rang Robert Scaife. The applicant did not move Lisa away from the waterside. Instead Amy said that he was falling over in the mud and kept forgetting what he was doing. Amy started to leave when she heard the applicant calling "Lisa" and saw that Lisa was now in the water. She saw Lisa bobbing in the water under some branches. She called 999. Then or shortly thereafter Robert Scaife arrived. During the 999 call Amy could be heard telling the applicant to get out of the water because Scaife could not help unless he got out of the way. It seemed to Amy that, whilst Scaife was trying to pull Lisa out of the water, the applicant was pulling her down into it and Scaife was telling the applicant to ‘get off’.

Scaife had heard the applicant asking for help to get Lisa out of the water. It was, of course, pitch dark, at 11.30 at night in April. Scaife himself slipped in the darkness and fell into the water up to his knees but he was able to sit against the bank. He had a torch. He turned it on. The applicant was up to his neck on the other side of Lisa. Scaife saw him holding Lisa by her ankles, legs and lower back with her head fully submerged under the water.

The police arrived and commenced CPR until the paramedics arrived. When the police arrived the applicant shouted: "She's gone and killed herself". He confirmed that he was there in breach of a DVPO and so he was arrested. He replied: "She rang and was going to kill herself". The applicant told the paramedics that he had met the deceased after she had sent him a text message saying she was by the river and wanted to kill herself. He went to stop her, he said. He later said that she had slipped and fallen and he had jumped in to save her.

The post-mortem evidence was that Lisa Welford had been in cardiac arrest for approximately 20 minutes which had caused unsurvivable brain damage. She died at the hospital.

A large number of other injuries were detected on Lisa Welford's body. There were several healing fractures to the humerus, her ribcage, the left cheekbone, the left jawbone, the right upper arm, to the spine and to the hyoid bone. There was a left-sided acute chronic bleed onto the brain, which was likely to have occurred at least in part before 24 April. There were several areas of swelling and bruising on the head including to the left eyelid, above the right eyebrow and on the lower lip. There were bruises on the left and right collarbone and scratches and bruises to the chest, hands and legs. The doctor who carried out the postmortem could not rule out that the bruises and scratches to Lisa's head had been caused in a fall, the bruising to the lip could have been caused by a tube being put into her mouth and the bruising on her arm could have been caused by someone gripping her arm perhaps when pulling her from the water. Equally the injuries could have been caused by blunt force trauma.

There was also medical evidence in relation to yet another injury suffered by Lisa Welford, namely a broken femur. That was some 6 to 12 hours old at the time of her death. The evidence was that there were two possible alternatives as to how this injury could have been sustained: either by way of a direct blow using considerable force or through a complex accelerated fall. The latter would have been a fall from a height or by acceleration. The injury could have been the result of a fall down the riverbank but only if there had been some form of locking around the knee area causing sufficient pressure to cause the fracture. Even then the evidence was that such a mechanism was more likely to cause a spiral fracture than the oblique displaced fracture identified during the post-mortem examination.

In addition to the evidence as to the relevant events by the river, there was also a good deal of bad character evidence relating to the applicant's previous convictions and long history of domestic violence. There was evidence from Samantha Houfe who had been in a relationship with the applicant for around 10 years from 2006. She described incidents of violence by the applicant which had occurred regularly, which had included dragging her by her hair, punching, slapping, kicking and strangling. On one occasion the applicant had tried to throw Samantha into a river until she had been saved by people who had seen the incident.

The applicant had a previous conviction arising from an incident in May 2007 when he had broken Samantha Houfe's wrist. He had dragged her out of the house when she tried to run away. He had kicked her causing her to fall. She had tried to get up but he had pushed her down again which fractured her wrist. A panic alarm had been fitted to her house to try to provide her with assistance. On another occasion, this time in September 2010, the applicant had strangled her. The police were called and photographs were taken of her neck. As we have indicated, the applicant and Samantha Houfe separated in around 2016.

There was evidence from third party witnesses who had witnessed the applicant's violence both to Samantha Houfe and to Lisa Welford. Lisa Welford had made various complaints of the applicant’s violence towards her resulting in injuries. In addition of course, there was the evidence from PC Harrison about the events which gave rise to counts 2 and 3 on the indictment.

At the close of the prosecution case an application was made for the case to be withdrawn from the jury on the basis that there was no case for the applicant to answer. The suggestion was that the jury could not be sure that the applicant had pushed the deceased into the river or had deliberately drowned her. It was submitted that the injuries to Lisa Welford were more consistent with accident, together with attempts to resuscitate her rather than a deliberate assault. A jury properly directed could not reject all realistic possibilities consistent with innocence from the combination of the relevant factual circumstances. It was also submitted that the prosecution were left wholly or mainly reliant on the bad character evidence to infer that the applicant had put the deceased in the river, and the jury would need to be directed that they must not convict the applicant wholly or mainly on the basis of that bad character evidence.

The judge produced a written ruling running to 23 paragraphs, in which he declined to withdraw the case from the jury. He set out the relevant law at paragraphs 4 to 7 and the parties' respective submissions from paragraphs 8 to 16. His conclusions began at paragraph 17:

The applicant had provided a pre-prepared statement at the time of his interview with the police in which he denied murder. He said in that statement that he did not know how Lisa Welford had sustained her injuries. He said he heard a splash, it was pitch black, he was wading around in attempt to find her using his hands. He shouted for help and pulled her to try to get to the side of the riverbank. He was panicking. He denied the allegations of assault occasioning actual bodily harm; thereafter he made no comment to the questions put.

The Defence Case Statement adopted the prepared statement. The applicant did not give evidence at his trial. As we have noted, he was convicted on all counts.

This is another renewed application for permission to appeal against conviction on the single ground that the judge was wrong not to allow the submission of no case to answer.In his advice in support of that submission, Mr Bourne-Arton KC essentially relied on the submissions that he made to the judge. In particular, he said:

The single judge refused the application for permission to appeal against conviction. He said:

The law relating to applications of no case to answercomes from the well-known judgment of Lord Lane in Galbraith [1981] 2 All ER 1060. There have been a number of subsequent decisions which have considered and refined that test.

Thus in R v Bokkum (March 2000, unreported) dealing with circumstantial evidence, this Court said that the prosecution were not required to show that the jury could not reasonably reach any alternative inference;, the question was whether it was properly open to the jury to reach the inference contended for by the prosecution. That decision was subsequently approved in R v Jabber [2006] EWCA Crim 2694, R v Goring [2011] EWCA Crim 24 and R v Goddard [2012] EWCA Crim 1756. In that latter case, at [36] this Court said this:

We note that in the present case, Mr Bourne-Arton makes no criticism of the legal test which the judge applied when considering the application of no case to answer. In this way, the only remaining issue concerns the judge's conclusions on the evidence in this case.

First, the judge concluded that there was direct evidence that the applicant was holding Lisa Welford in a position whereby her head was submerged under the water - the fatal act which caused her death. We have considered this carefully. We acknowledge that there was something of a time gap between Lisa entering the water and Mr Scaife seeing the applicant with Lisa's head under the water. But there was direct evidence, primarily the evidence from Robert Scaife as to the applicant holding Lisa’s head under the water, on which a jury could safely convict the applicant. As the judge said, the question of the applicant's intention at the time was a matter for the jury. So too was the question of timing. But the fact that the applicant was seen committing the act which was responsible for Lisa Welford's death, was strong direct evidence of the prosecution case against him.

We note that in the course of his advice Mr Bourne-Arton takes issue with the judge's interpretation of Robert Scaife's evidence. He made some oral submissions to that effect this morning. From the advice perhaps the most obvious example is at paragraph 25, where it is suggested that the tenor of Scaife's evidence was "exculpatory" rather than anything else. In our view, that paragraph rather exemplifies the difficulties faced by this renewed application. On the face of it, the judge's interpretation of Scaife's evidence seems the obvious one. But the assessment of Scaife's evidence as a whole, whether it was exculpatory or otherwise, was classically a matter for the jury. As the judge correctly recognised, he had no basis for removing their opportunity to make that assessment.

Secondly, even without that important strand of evidence, it seems to us plain that the jury were entitled to draw the inference that the applicant killed Lisa Welford. Such an inference arose from a wide variety of sources. We simply set out some examples:

In our view, there was and could be no real answer to the strength of the evidence relied on by the prosecution that gave rise to the inference that the applicant killed Lisa Welford. It is true that, later in the series of events, the applicant appeared to want the emergency services to be called, but that change of mind and what it might suggest were again a matter for the jury to assess. It is certainly no answer to say that, because the applicant was intoxicated, his various changes of case were irrelevant. It appears that, despite his intoxication, he had deliberately chosen to run a false case as to suicide, carefully trailing such a case at the murder scene.

Thirdly, if all that direct and circumstantial evidence were not enough, there was also the extensive evidence of the applicant's appalling history of violence towards both Lisa Welford and, previously, to Samantha Houfe. This was manifestly not a case in which the bad character evidence was somehow endeavouring to support a weak prosecution case. Instead, this was a strong prosecution case on the facts that was entirely consistent with the bad character evidence of previous violence against partners.

Accordingly, we consider that the judge was right to dismiss the application of no case to answer and the single judge was right to refuse permission to appeal. Notwithstanding Mr Bourne-Arton's careful submissions this morning, we refuse this renewed application for permission to appeal against conviction.

When he sentenced the applicant, the judge correctly identified that the only sentence that he could pass was one of life imprisonment. By reference to paragraph 5 of schedule 21 of the Sentencing Act 2020, he fixed the starting point for the minimum term as one of 15 years. No criticism is made of that starting point. The judge took the murder charge as the lead offence and took into account the applicant's convictions on counts 2 and 3 as aggravating factors when setting the minimum term.

The judge identified a number of other aggravating factors. Those included the applicant's record of previous offending and disregard for court orders, the vulnerability of Lisa Welford and the domestic context of murder, and the fact that the attack took place after the applicant had consumed a large amount of alcohol, which the applicant knew made it more likely than not that it could cause him to inflict serious violence on Lisa Welford. In addition, by reference to the medical evidence, the judge found that the applicant held Lisa under the water unable to breathe for a significant period of time, which indicated that he intended to kill her. That meant that there was no mitigating factor to the effect that he did not intend to kill her.

As to mitigation, the judge accepted that this was not a premeditated offence. That of course is a neutral factor rather than a positive point in mitigation. The judge also referred to the applicant's struggle with alcohol and drug addiction. He took into account the principle of totality. In that way, balancing the aggravating factors and the mitigating factors, but concluding that the former significantly outweighed the latter, he arrived at the minimum term of 21 years.

On behalf of the applicant it was submitted that:

The Single Judge rejected the application for permission to appeal against sentence. He said:

Despite Mr Bourne-Arton's concise and focused submissions this morning as to the sentencing exercise, we find ourselves in agreement with the single judge. There were numerous aggravating factors in this case as recorded by both the judge in his sentencing remarks and by the single judge when he refused permission. Those significant aggravating factors did far outweigh the mitigating features of intoxication by drink and (possibly) the lack of premeditation. Accordingly, an uplift from the starting point of 15 years was inevitable.

We consider that the precise amount of that uplift was uniquely a matter for the judge, who presided over the trial and had been able to reach an informed view regarding both the applicant and the evidence, including both the lengthy history of the applicant's violence against his partners and his conduct on the night in question. The uplift from 15 to 21 years was neither wrong in principle nor manifestly excessive.

In those circumstances it is unnecessary to go through each of the points raised on behalf of the applicant. But we should comment on some of them. First, in our view, there was no double counting. Counts 2 and 3 were plainly aggravating factors. The applicant's previous history of similar offending was an entirely separate aggravating feature.

Secondly, we consider that the evidence of the sustained violence suffered by both Samantha Houfe and Lisa Welford demonstrate that it is wrong to suggest that the applicant's breaches of the DVPOs were "relatively minor". Furthermore, to suggest that the applicant's past and present offending was due to his problems with alcohol, as if in some way that was a strong mitigating factor, in our view, is wholly wide of the mark. As the sentencing judge pointed out, the applicant knew that alcohol made him violent, but that knowledge did not stop him drinking and so it did not stop him being violent.

For all these reasons therefore, the renewed application for permission to appeal against sentence is refused.