Winston Alexander v The Queen

• Jurisdiction: Caribbean States
• Judge: Saunders, P.CCJ.,Anderson, J.CCJ.,Barrow, J.CCJ.,Burgess, J.CCJ.,Jamader, J.CCJ.
• Judgment Date: 23 July 2020
• Court: Caribbean Court of Justice
• Docket Number: CCJ Application No. BBCR2020/001 BB Criminal Appeal No. 6 of 2012

Caribbean Court of Justice

Saunders, P.CCJ.; Anderson, J.CCJ.; Barrow, J.CCJ.; Burgess, J.CCJ.; Jamader, J.CCJ.

CCJ Application No. BBCR2020/001 BB Criminal Appeal No. 6 of 2012

Winston Alexander

and

The Queen

Appearances:

Mr. Bryan L Weekes for the Applicant

Mrs. Donna C B Babb-Agard QC and Ms Krystal Delaney for the Respondent

Criminal practice and procedure - Leave to appeal conviction — Murder — Whether trial judge properly directed jury on defence of accident — Whether leave to appeal should be granted — Sufficient grounds for appeal — Andrew Lovell v. The Queen [2016] CCJ 6.

REASONS FOR DECISION

1 The Court refused the application by Mr. Winston Alexander for special leave to appeal his murder conviction after a virtual hearing on 16 July 2020, with reasons to follow.

2 It was only one of the five grounds that the applicant wished to argue on appeal that the Court fully considered to decide if the applicant had an arguable case. This was because the applicant was proposing to be permitted to argue grounds which did not arise out of the decision of the Court of Appeal. But, as indicated to counsel for the applicant, an appeal to this Court lies from a decision of the Court of Appeal; it does not lie from the decision of the trial court. As this Court stated in Andrew Lovell v. The Queen [2016] CCJ 6 (AJ) at [19], an appellant must bring to the Court of Appeal the whole case he has and will not be allowed to bring different aspects of his case before different appellate tribunals. The Court will treat the attempt to do so as an abuse of process unless there are exceptional reasons for doing otherwise and it would be a miscarriage of justice to refuse to permit the new ground to be argued. In the present case, this Court considered the new grounds and was satisfied there was no potential miscarriage of justice in refusing to permit the applicant to rely on them as proposed grounds of appeal.

3 The sole ground, then, on which the application was permitted to proceed was that the Court of Appeal erred in not allowing the appeal and setting aside the conviction for murder; that court having found that the trial judge did not properly direct the jury on the defence of accident. The Court of Appeal had accepted that the trial judge had not given a full direction on the defence of accident. Instead of allowing the appeal, however, the Court of Appeal applied the provision in section 4(2) of the...