Can I appeal if I pleaded guilty?

This article relates to individuals who have pleaded guilty and been sentenced in the Crown Court.  There is a different process to appealing a conviction in the magistrates’ court or to withdraw or vacate a guilty plea before sentence.

Even if an individual at the Crown Court was fit to plead, received expert legal advice, was aware of what they were doing, and intended to plead guilty, this does not preclude an appeal against their conviction.

The same test applies for an individual convicted after trial or following a guilty plea, and an individual will only have grounds to apply for leave to appeal if there are grounds to suggest that their conviction was ‘unsafe’ under section 2 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1968.  However, after a guilty plea there is a different approach to when an individual has been found guilty following a jury verdict.  The basic principle being that if someone has pleaded guilty it is usual there would have been sufficient evidence against them, and they would have accepted committing the offence.

The case of Tredget [2002] EWCA Crim 108 has set out 3 scenarios in which someone who has pleaded guilty may still have grounds to appeal against their conviction.

1. The guilty plea is vitiated – There could be several circumstances in which a guilty plea could be considered as diminished or weakened resulting in arguable grounds that the conviction is unsafe. For example, if a Judge has given an incorrect ruling so that a defendant could not avoid entering a guilty plea. An example of this is when a Judge indicates that there is no defence to be left to the jury.  It should be noted that a judicial ruling that would only make an individual’s defence more difficult is unlikely to be sufficient (for example allowing the admission of bad character evidence).  Another example in this category would be if a defendant received improper pressure or threats to enter a guilty plea or received incorrect legal advice.  It would be exceptional for a Court to find that incorrect legal advice would be a ground to allow an appeal after a guilty plea.  The advice would have to go to the heart of the plea and an example would be if an individual was not advised about a potential defence.  The case law suggests that the Court would also need to be of the view that the defence would quite probably have succeeded to allow an appeal, so in the circumstances there has been a clear injustice.
2. There was an abuse of process – The argument in these situations would be that a fair trial could never have taken place, and as a consequence any guilty plea could not be regarded as safe. Examples of these scenarios would be if the evidence was obtained by entrapment, or there was a fundamental breach of Article 6 in respect of a fair trial.
3. The individual is not guilty – Appeals should be allowed in these scenarios regardless of a guilty plea having been entered if there is clear evidence that the defendant is not guilty of the offence to which they pleaded guilty. It is not sufficient to establish that the defendant ‘may’ not have committed the offence.  To succeed on an appeal the Court would want to see that the offence was NOT committed.  For example, the defendant could not have committed the offence as they were in prison on the relevant date, or where new evidence is available, for example in the cases of the Post Office offences. 

It should be noted that fresh evidence can be adduced as part of an appeal under section 23 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1968. However, fresh evidence will only be allowed if it is likely to be credible, would have been admissible in the original proceedings and is relevant to the key issue in the appeal.  There must be a reasonable explanation for the failure to adduce it previously.