Mental health review tribunal ordering patient's deferred discharge - fresh admission application made prior to discharge not lawful in absence of significant different information.

Appeal from Court of Appeal

R (Von Brandenburg) v East London and The City Mental Health NHS Trust and another: HL (Lord Bingham of Cornhill, Lord Steyn, Lord Hobhouse of Woodborough, Lord Scott of Foscote and Lord Rodger of Earlsferry): 13 November 2003

The claimant, compulsorily detained under section 3 of the Mental Health Act 1983, applied to a mental health review tribunal which, contrary to the recommendations of his doctors and his approved social worker, directed his deferred discharge under section 72 of the Act.

Immediately before the discharge date he was detained under section 3 on his social worker's application supported by his doctors.

His application for judicial review was refused and his appeal to the Court of Appeal was dismissed on different grounds.

The claimant appealed.

Richard Gordon QC and Paul Bowen (instructed by Scott-Moncrieff, Harbour & Sinclair) for the claimant; Nigel Pleming QC and Kristina Stern (instructed by RadcliffesLeBrasseur) for the trust; Stephen Knafler (instructed by Tower Hamlets London Borough Council) for the approved social worker.

Held, dismissing the appeal, that a mental health review tribunal was a court to which the law of contempt applied so that no one might knowingly act so as to nullify its decision and the social worker could not apply for admission on the sole ground of disagreement with the tribunal's decision to discharge; that a social worker might not lawfully apply for admission of a patient whose discharge had been ordered by a tribunal's decision of which he was aware unless he reasonably and in good faith considered that he had information, unknown to the tribunal, which put a significantly different complexion on the case as compared with that before the tribunal (WLR).

Homicide - no direct evidence of provocation - judge right not to leave issue to jury

R v Miao: CA (Lord Justice Rose, Mr Justice Leveson and Mr Justice Tugendhat): 17 November 2003

The defendant was alleged to have killed his girlfriend by strangulation.

There was evidence that the defendant and the victim had had an aggressive relationship.

The defendant admitted putting his hands around the victim's neck but denied any intention to kill.

Prosecuting and defence counsel invited the judge to leave to the jury the question of provocation but he refused to do so because he held that the evidence of provocation was minimal and because it undermined the defendant's actual defence that he had no intention to kill.

The defendant was convicted of murder.

He appealed against conviction on the grounds that, in accordance with R v Rossiter (1992) 95 Cr App R 326, where there was material that was capable of amounting to provocation, however tenuous, the issue should be left to the jury.

Susan Edwards QC (assigned by the Registrar of Criminal Appeals) for the appellant; Jonathan Laidlaw (instructed by the Crown Prosecution Service, Kingston-upon-Thames) for the Crown.

Held, dismissing the appeal, that if, as observed by Lord Steyn in R v Acott [1997] 1 WLR 306, 311 and 313, there was insufficient material for a jury to find that it was a reasonable possibility that there was specific provoking conduct resulting in a loss of self-control, there was simply no issue of provocation to be considered by the jury; that, similarly, if there was merely a speculative possibility that a defendant might have been provoked by the victim, then the jury should not be directed to consider provocation as a defence; and that, accordingly, the judge's ruling was correct.

(WLR).