Man accused of Great Yarmouth murder twice has conviction 'restored'
Stuart Layden was found guilty twice of the same murder and had both convictions quashed, a decision that has now been reversed by the Supreme Court
A man who was twice found guilty of the same murder and had both convictions quashed has had the conviction "restored" following a Supreme Court ruling.
Stuart Layden was convicted in 2013 of murdering Ian Church in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, in May 2012, and was handed a mandatory life sentence with a minimum jail term of 13 years.
The Court of Appeal overturned the conviction in 2015 and ordered a retrial, and said that Layden should be arraigned - asked how he pleads - on a fresh indictment within two months.
He was convicted and jailed for nearly nine years after the retrial in 2016 but Court of Appeal judges also quashed this conviction in 2023, as Layden had not been asked to enter pleas on the fresh indictment within the two months.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) challenged the second Court of Appeal ruling at the Supreme Court at a hearing in March, claiming that "punctilious arraignment" had been prioritised over a fair trial.
Lawyers for Layden opposed the appeal but five Supreme Court justices unanimously ruled in the CPS's favour on Wednesday.
In their 27-page judgment, Lord Hamblen said the law did not intend to cause the "total invalidity" of retrial proceedings.
He said: "Parliament cannot fairly have intended total invalidity to follow from non-compliance with the procedural requirements."
Lord Hamblen, whose judgment was supported by Lord Hodge, Lord Lloyd-Jones, Lord Stephens and Lady Simler, added that the "total invalidity" of a retrial "risks bringing the criminal justice system into disrepute" and could lead to "otherwise safe" convictions being "set aside on a technicality".
He concluded that Layden's murder conviction would be "restored" and issues concerning bail and his surrender to custody would be dealt with by the Court of Appeal.
Layden was originally convicted of Mr Church's murder alongside four others following an incident at the Bricklayers Arms in Great Yarmouth in the early hours of May 5 2012.
Quashing his second conviction in 2023, the Court of Appeal said the failure to rearraign Layden before the retrial was "entirely avoidable" but noted that this was a "procedural error" in a case where the conviction was "otherwise sound, and in circumstances where no prejudice arose out of the failure in question".
David Perry KC, for the CPS, told the Supreme Court last month in written submissions that retrial provisions allowed "cases to be retried on their merits" and prevented "persons who are guilty escaping liability on a technicality".
Peter Wilcock KC, for Layden, said in his written submissions that ignoring the two-month time limit would "effectively neuter the 'extra safeguard' Parliament intended to introduce in Court of Appeal ordered retrials".
But Lord Hamblen said in his ruling that while the law did not specify the consequences of failing to comply with procedural rules around the two-month arraignment period, invalidating proceedings entirely would be a "triumph of form over substance" and created the "perverse incentive" for a defendant to abscond or "do nothing".