Smith v R

• Jurisdiction: Saint Kitts and Nevis
• Judge: Lewis, C.J.
• Judgment Date: 10 August 1967
• Neutral Citation: KN 1967 CA 11
• Docket Number: No. 1 of 1967
• Court: Court of Appeal (Saint Kitts and Nevis)
• Date: 10 August 1967

The West Indies Associated States Supreme Court. Court of Appeal

Lewis, C.J.,

Gordon, J.A.

Lewis, J.A

No. 1 of 1967

Smith

and

R.

Appearances:

Mr. D. Byron for the appellant.

Mr. J.S. Archibald (Senior Crown Counsel) for the respondent.

Practice and procedure - Directions to the jury — Self defence — Appellant convicted of murder — Whether the judge erred in law when he withdrew the issue of self-defence from the jury and whether the judge misdirected the jury on the issue of self defence to the effect that the burden of proving that the act was not in self-defence lay with the crown.

Held: That there was a serious misdirection. That the judge's direction on self-defence was inadequate. However the jury even if they had received proper direction from the trial judge could not reasonably have reached a verdict of not guilty on the evidence. Appeal dismissed.

Lewis, C.J.

1 This is an appeal against the conviction of the appellant for murder at the Criminal assizes held at Charlestown, Nevis, on the 22nd June 1967. The facts, so far as they are relevant, may be shortly stated.

2 On the 25th of June 1965, at about 7 o' clock in the evening, the appellant and the deceased, James Halliday, were at a shop belonging to Horace Lawrence, the owner of the “Base Bar” on the sea side of the Main Road. They got into a dispute and exchanged hard words, and Lawrence put them both out of the shop. Sometime between 7 and 8 pm. Halliday went up to a vendor named Caroline Brade at Craddock Road and purchased food from her. One Terry Parris was present. The appellant arrived on the scene a few minutes later and he and Parris began to argue. Then the appellant, turning to Halliday, said — using an insulting word: “you know I can bang you”. Halliday replied “Bass man, a know you can bang me man”. The accused went away and about fifteen minutes later returned, approached Halliday, and in the words of the witness Brade “moved his hand across Halliday's belly part”. Halliday boxed him, throwing him to the ground, and immediately complained of pain in his belly. One Whiteman who was also present nicked up the appellant and it was then seen that the appellant had a knife in his hand. The deceased walked away, and a little later was found lying on the Craddock road with a wound in his belly and his intestines protruding. He was taken to the Alexandra Hospital where an operation was performed. He died there on the 10th July 1966. The doctor who attended to the deceased was Dr. Barbara Lyle. She was not in Nevis at the time of the trial, and her deposition was admitted under the provisions of Section 193 of the Magistrate's Code of Procedure Act (Chapter 48 of the Revised Laws). In her deposition she said that she found a 2” perforated wound in the abdomen of the deceased from which a loop about 12” long of the small intestines was protruding. In her opinion death was due to peritonitis of the abdomen and pericarditis as a result of the wound.

3 The defence raised at the trial was self-defence and witnesses were cross examined with a view to establishing that before the appellant slashed at the deceased, the deceased had made insulting remarks about the appellant's girlfriend and had punched the appellant. Both suggestions were denied by the witnesses. The appellant did not give evidence but made a statement from the dock in which he said:

“That night when such thing took place I do had this knife in my hand. I never meant to harm the deceased but he was so sharp on me as I go to stop him off of me how he come t o get hurt”.

4 Three...