Man could face murder trial for death of Great Yarmouth man Ian Church for third time
A man who has been convicted twice for murder – and had both of those convictions quashed – may have to stand trial for a third time, the Supreme Court has heard.
Stuart Layden was convicted of murdering Ian Church in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, in May 2012 and was handed a mandatory life sentence with a minimum jail term of nearly nine years.
Court of Appeal judges overturned the original conviction in 2015 and said he should be arraigned – asked how he pleads – on a fresh indictment within two months.
He was convicted and jailed after a second trial, but Court of Appeal judges also quashed this conviction in 2023 because they found that it took more than six months for Layden to be arraigned.
At a hearing on Monday, David Perry KC, for the Crown Prosecution Service, asked Supreme Court judges to allow another retrial.
He said the Court of Appeal judges had prioritised “punctilious arraignment” over a fair trial and that “this resulted in the total invalidity of the entire proceedings”.
Mr Perry said in written submissions: “The purpose of the retrial provisions of the Criminal Appeal Act is to prevent potential injustice by allowing cases to be retried on their merits and thus avoid persons who are guilty escaping liability on a technicality.”
Peter Wilcock KC, for Layden, said in 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”.
He said that if the prosecution’s argument was correct, it means those involved in a trial could “subvert” the purpose of the legislation and “bypass a Parliament and Court of Appeal mandated time limit designed to achieve a speedy retrial and set their own timetable instead”.
He continued: “Parliament’s intention must have been that, if arraignment on a fresh indictment did not occur within the statutory time limit, or at all, then no valid retrial proceedings occurred in the Crown Court and, therefore, the conviction should be quashed.”
The hearing – before Lord Hodge, Lord Lloyd-Jones, Lord Hamblen, Lord Stephens and Lady Simler – is expected to conclude on Tuesday.
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