TRACIE Andrews, who was
jailed for life for murdering her fiancé
after claiming he had been the victim of a “road rage” killer, lost her
appeal against her conviction yesterday.
TRACIE Andrews, who was
jailed for life for murdering her fiancé
after claiming he had been the victim of a “road rage” killer, lost her
appeal against her conviction yesterday.
Three judges in the Court of Appeal rejected pleas by her lawyers that “damaging” pre-trial publicity about the case meant that she could not have had a fair trial and that her conviction should be quashed as unsafe.
Andrews, 29, had denied stabbing Lee Harvey, more than 30 times after a quarrel at Coopers Hill, Alvechurch, Worcs, while driving home from a public house. She was convicted at Birmingham Crown Court in July last year.
She was escorted to the court by security guards but waived her right to be in the dock when the judges gave their reserved judgment rejecting her appeal. Lord Justice Roch, who was sitting with Mr Justice Laws and Mr Justice Butterfield, said they did not consider that the jury at her trial had been prevented from reaching a proper verdict by reporting in the media about either of the issues it had to decide.
These were whether the jurors were sure that it was Andrews who had killed Mr Harvey and whether they were sure that the possibility of it being a case of manslaughter by reason of provocation had been excluded by the Crown.
“We have already indicated the strength of the prosecution's case against the appellant and the conclusion we have reached is that there is nothing unsafe in her conviction,” he said.
The prosecution's case against Andrews, a former model and barmaid, was that she had attacked Mr Harvey with an imitation Swiss Army knife before concocting a story about him being the victim of a road rage attack by a “fat man with staring eyes”. In the appeal hearing, Ronald Thwaites, QC, for Andrews, said that the judge at her trial, Mr Justice Buckley, had seriously underestimated the risks to her obtaining a fair trial because of the pre-trial publicity.
He said this had been most damaging after Andrews had been charged before Christmas 1996 and that her name and picture “quickly became synonymous with unmitigated wickedness, cunning and duplicity in the collective public mind”.
He also claimed that the trial judge had failed to take reasonable steps to avoid the risk of her not receiving a fair trial and that the potential jurors should have been questioned before the case began to discover if they had been prejudiced against her. But, dismissing the appeal, Lord Justice Roch said the court could not accept that reports of the case had or could have had the effect claimed by her counsel.
He said: “The reporting about which complaint is made was not one-sided nor was it such as to make the appellant's name synonymous with unmitigated wickedness, cunning and duplicity, nor was it a blitz of adverse publicity.”
He rejected criticisms of the trial judge's handling of the case on the issue of publicity. “The directions given by the judge to the jury concerning the reporting of the case both before the prosecution's opening and during his summing-up were, in our judgment, a sufficient precaution against the small risk that existed that a juror might not, in reaching a conclusion, confine himself to the evidence he had heard or seen in court,” said Lord Justice Roch.
Rejecting the claims that the judge should have questioned jurors about possible prejudice, Lord Justice Roch said the questioning of potential jurors, whether orally or by a questionnaire in cases where there was no suggestion that potential jurors might have a personal interest, was to be “avoided save in exceptional circumstances”.
Such questioning, he said, was “of doubtful efficacy” and it could produce the result that both sides and the court wished to avoid, namely bringing the attention of jurors to matters which the parties and the court wished them to disregard.