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Court of Appeal

AFT ER a trial lasting forty days at the Central Criminal Court, various members of the Kray brothers' "firm" were convicted of murder, in various degrees. The appellants in R. v. Kras (1969, 3 All E.R. 941) complained that the trial had been wrongly allowed to proceed upon the basis of a voluntary bill which had charged, in counts I and 2, two separate murders, and, in counts 3 and 4, two charges of being accessory to two separate murders. Separate committal proceedings had been held in respect of each murder and two indictments were originally laid, but in the place of these indictments proceedings were eventually taken upon the voluntary bill prepared as stated above. The main grounds of complaint made on appeal were that the trial judge was wrong in refusing to allow separate trials on the two sets of counts respectively and that this meant that the applicants' defence was prejudiced by virtue of the evidence of one of the accused who had pleaded that he had acted under duress brought to bear on him by the appellants and their "firm". The first of these grounds was based on the alternative arguments that joinder of two offences of murder in one indictment is contrary to law and if this be not so, the judge was wrong to exercise his discretion 'in such a way as to allow a trial without severance, since this gave rise to a miscarriage of justice. The answer to the legal question, Can you join two offences of murder in one indictment? depends upon the interpretation to be put upon r.g of Sch. I of the Indictments Act, 1915, which provides that "charges for any ... misdemeanours may be joined in the same indictment if those charges are founded on the same facts, or form or are a part of a series of offences of the same or of a similar character". Counsel for one of the applicants argued that two murders cannot be a "series" of offences, for the word "series" involves at least three components. Counsel for the other applicant (who did not support this argument) contended that the earlier rule of practice incorporated in r.g did not sanction the joinder of offences unless they arose out of the same facts or were part of a system of conduct, which was not the case here.