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news
Celia Ward falls into path of car after being confronted by Auriol Grey (via Cambridgeshire Constabulary and BBC News)Pedestrian jailed for manslaughter over cyclist's death has conviction overturned
A woman who was sentenced to three years in jail for manslaughter after being found by a jury to have confronted an elderly cyclist, causing her to be killed after she fell into the path of a vehicle, has had her conviction overturned at appeal.
Auriol Grey, who has cerebral palsy and is partially blind, had her conviction overturned today by the Court of Appeal, the BBC reports, three judges ruling that the prosecution's case had been "insufficient even to be left to the jury" and that the "appellant's conviction for manslaughter is unsafe".
Ms Grey's lawyers had told the judges that they believed no "base offence" was ever identified during the trial, a manslaughter conviction requiring an unlwaful action to have caused the death of Celia Ward in 2020, the senior judge later stating in conclusion that, "Had Mrs Ward not died we regard it as inconceivable that the appellant would have been charged with assault."
The 50-year-old had been walking along a route in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, when she shouted at the cyclist to "get off the pavement" and gestured as she passed, Mrs Ward falling off her bike and into the path of oncoming traffic.
When Ms Grey was sentenced, Judge Sean Enright had called her "territorial about the pavement" and having "resented" the presence of a cyclist on it. However, whether the route was in fact a shared-use path was also questioned during the initial trial, Cambridgeshire Constabulary unable to "categorically" ascertain whether Mrs Ward had been cycling on a shared use path or pavement.
The case prompted campaigners to urge highways authorities to remove conflict between cyclists and pedestrians, with new shared-use signs installed in the town.
Grey left the scene before the arrival of the emergency services and went to a supermarket to do her shopping. She was arrested the next day, and claimed that Mrs Ward had been cycling "at high speed" and that she was "anxious I was going to get hit by it" so "flinched out with her left arm to protect herself".
CCTV footage shared by Cambridgeshire Constabulary showed Grey shouting at Mrs Ward, described by her widower as an "experienced and competent cyclist", to "get off the f***ing pavement" and the pedestrian was jailed for three years last year having been found guilty at a retrial.
However, appeal judges Dame Victoria Sharp, Mrs Justice Yip and Mrs Justice Farbey concluded that they have "no hesitation" in concluding that the conviction was "unsafe" and that the prosecution's case had been "insufficient even to be left to the jury".
The trio of appeal judges agreed with Ms Grey's lawyers, one of whom — Adrian Darbishire KC — argued that no "base offence", an unlawful action to have caused the death was ever established during the trial.
Dame Sharp said the jury had never been asked to decide "the fundamental question of whether a base offence was established" and concluded that "had Mrs Ward not died we regard it as inconceivable that the appellant would have been charged with assault".
While her gesture towards the cyclist was described as "hostile", Darbishire KC responded: "Hostile gesticulation is not a crime, otherwise we would have 50,000 football fans each weekend being apprehended."
The Crown Prosecution Service's barrister Simon Spence KC told the court that it was accepted that "common assault as the base offence was not identified by name". He later asked for the case to be returned to the Crown Court for a retrial, a request that was denied.
In a statement released after the conviction was overturned, Ms Grey's family urged for "lessons to be learnt".
"Whilst we welcome the decision of the Court of Appeal, our thoughts today are also with the Ward family, and I am a sure a day doesn't go by when they don't remember their tragic loss," the statement said.
"We are very relieved that Auriol's prison ordeal is over and we would like to thank the staff and inmates of HMP Peterborough for the kindness and consideration they have shown over the last year.
"There has been unnecessary and prolonged suffering and vulnerable people like Auriol need better support from the justice system — we hope lessons will be learnt."
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
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103 comments
I only just read this. Fuck me, no-one can doubt that she actually pushed her, and the judge (I think it was) said as much at the time ..
You may not like my posting and it is true that I have (almost) only ever posted on about this case, starting last year after the conviction.
You could have said the same thing last year about me simply being a WUM etc.
It turned out that I had a point though didn't it? I could see what even the police and the judge couldn't (or didn't want to) see. The pedestrian committed no crime.
The actions of the pedestrian 100% caused the cyclist to crash and die!
Their point (minimal reading) is that the appeal court have said that the particular crimes could not be proved on the evidence given. Not even assault - even if they had only charged that rather than manslaughter*.
That is not quite the same as "bears no responsibility", "did nothing wrong", "should never have come to court", or (without further qualification) "committed no crime". I know the latter is somewhat "semantics" (we only generally consider crimes as charged). Perhaps it's best just to point to the appeal court judgment (p. 35 / 36) which reads (I've shortened slightly):
Assuming they're right on the details (which I have to, not having the legal chops) at least the Court of Appeal has done what they're supposed to do. And reasonably quickly, for them.
None of this "brings anyone back", nor advances the plot for "protecting vulnerable people" (both victim and accused were vulnerable in different ways). Both were failed by our street designs: encouraging conflict by use of shared space and putting cyclists (or pedestrians for that matter) right next to motor vehicles travelling at speeds where death in a collision is quite likely.
* There were two failings in the original trial - even had they sufficient evidence to establish e.g. there was an assault they failed to follow the process to make that work as the "base offense" for the manslaughter part.
The appeal judgement is completely neutral on the question of whether Auriol Grey did anything wrong or unreasonable. Its only concern is whether she did anything unlawful and it is clear that the unlawful act was not even identified let alone proved. It says that her actions contributed to the death, but lots of things contributed so that really is not saying much at all.
Two points of clarification.
1. The appeal did not succeed due to a technicality, it succeeded because the pedestrian did not perform any unlawful act.
There was no assault.
2. The police do not have any more evidence. The CCTV that they have just continues after the cyclist goes into the road and is hit by the car. They may say that this proves guilt but they are wrong.
Shouting and swearing at somebody, moving towards them and gesticulating in a threatening manner in such a way that a reasonable person might consider they are in danger of violence is an assault in law. Grey clearly did that. The court's assertion that she would not have been charged with an assault if Mrs Ward had not fallen into the road and been killed may well be true but that does not obviate the fact that the video shows a clear case of assault under the letter of the law.
Not a lawyer myself but having read their judgement (thanks quiff) the appeal judges are also explicitly denying assault could have been proved under the letter of the law.
They set out what is legally required to establish assault. They were very clear that they believed that none of the evidence lead at trial - even broadly considered - would have served to prove the intent / mental part of this.
I find the whole concerning (and also faulty prosecuting AND judging in the original) - but they do appear to have firmly closed that door in this case.
Indeed but their reasoning seems dubious at best to me, this is where appeals become a matter of opinion where the judges are saying that if the jury had been asked to consider the baseline assault charge as required then they would have reached a different verdict; whether or not one believes that there was sufficient intent on the part of Grey to prove an assault charge, it is at least arguable either way and it seems bizarre that the judges have allocated themselves the right to second-guess what the jury would have done had the case been presented differently. One has to question why they denied the application for a retrial where the facts of the matter could once again be put before a jury with a full explanation of the legal niceties, which would have been the fairest alternative.
I think that the problems are (1) the amount of media coverage there's been would make it practically impossible to achieve a 'fair' trial, and (2) the culture wars have been stoked up so much over the last year that most of the legal system and the media would probably now settle for nothing less than for Grey to be sanctified and Ward's broken bicycle put on public display 'pour encourager les autres'.
disagree, I think outside of this website I would not have heard of the case at all.
Possibly it has been particularly prominent on this site, but it certainly has been widely reported in the general media. Just searching "Auriol Grey" on google and stories come up from Sky News, BBC News, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, The Independent etc.
IDK - but it seemed to me as OnYerBike has noted. "They do not believe the evidence provided was sufficent that there was any potential to prove an assault occured."
Again I'm concerned about the overall look. And there is always some possibility of a different result if you throw the dice again, no matter the quality of evidence (e.g. instruct a Johnnie Cochran).
And things can change if new evidence emerges.
But... unless they in turn were completely mistaken about the evidence and how it looks (to a jury of non-cyclists... and of course "beyond reasonable doubt") I guess the appeal court has done its job.
You need to re-read the appeal judgement my friend. The appeal judges are clear that the video does not show an assault. A lot of people have made the mistake (including the police) of working backwards from the terrible outcome and thinking that that proves that the interaction was an assault. That is wrong. The interaction was not assault. Mrs Ward had hearing problems so probably didn't hear Grey anyway. Grey did not move towards Ward, she just continued walking on the pavement. Ward was careless and startled when making an extremely close pass by Grey. She failed to control her bike after that.
No, I think you need to read it more closely.
The Judges were very clear that assault was not proven, and indeed they do not believe the evidence provided was sufficent that there was any potential to prove an assault occured.
That is, in an important way, different from saying that an assault did not occur.
Your version of events (in which an assault did not occur) is one that the appeal judges feel is compatable both with evidence available and the jury's decision at the original trial, on the basis of the directions they were given.
However, there are other versions of events, in which an assault does occur, which have not been ruled out either. Neither the original trial nor the appeal judges reach a factual conclusion of whether or not Ms Grey did strike Mrs Ward. Neither the original trial nor the appeal judges reach a conclusion of why exactly Mrs Ward fell - she could have been knocked off by the strike (if one happened); she could have fallen off having flinched in apprehension of a strike; or she could have lost balance having slowed to pass Ms. Grey. And we don't know in sufficient detail the state of either Ms Grey's or Mrs Ward's minds. So, there certainly are versions of events, compatible with the evidence presented and the appeal judges' ruling, in which an assault did occur.
Well I suppose that technically an assault of some kind could occur any time that two people pass each other on the pavement. We don't try to prove that an assault did not occur. We just assume that assaults don't occur all the time unless there is good reason to think that an assault has occurred. In this case there is no reason to think that an assault has occurred - that is what the judges are saying.
Grey admitted to light contact during a police interview and you don't have to be hit for it to be assault.
So what if there was light contact? It wasn't Grey's fault, it was the cyclist's fault.
Fuck off
Any contact was incidental and was only possible because the cyclist was too close (much too close).
And how would you know that?
She was--presumably--within striking distance?
So we have a pedestrian objecting to a cyclist being on the shared use(?) pavement. Shouting at them to leave the pavement, and making contact with their arm leading to the cyclist leaving the pavement. But we cannot deduce from this the the pedestrian striking the cyclist was in any way contributory to the cyclist leaving the pavement? That in fact the contact only occured as the cyclist was already falling off into the path of the vehicle?
Grey admited there was contact, and we only have her word that the contact was light given the consequences to the only other witness.
The police reviewwed the evidence and decided it was sufficient, the CPS reviewed the evidence and decided it was sufficient and a jury of her peers reviewed the evidence and decided it was sufficient to determine that grey directly caused Ward to fall to her death. Remove the motor vehcilse and will still have one person knocked to the floor by another and apparently this is not assault.
As to the cyclist being too close, what does that mean? do you expect 1.5m on a shared use pavement? even though a bicycle is not a car, and Mrs Ward was almost certainly not travelling at high speed.
Always a bad sign when someone exceeds the HP threshold.
Bring back the post count please, then we'd have more idea of whether the person is newly signed up.
It's usually fairly obvious, but victim blaming a dead person is a clear giveaway
Yep. Either newly signed up or a PBU.
Well said.
Clearly here as a WUM. Another one to add to the ignore list.
Shouting, swearing and gesticulating at somebody in a way that would make a reasonable person believe that violence might follow is an assault. Grey did all these things. She also admitted that she made contact with Mrs Ward, which also constitutes assault.
The f-word is so common these days that it hardly constitutes assault! Come on. She called out from a distance and the cyclist probably didn't hear her anyway. If she had heard then a reasonable, considerate person would have stopped cycling. The gesticulating was fine and probably just intended to attract attention - it was also not seen or ignored. There is no assault, it just looks bad (to some) because it is shortly followed by a near collision with a cyclist (which is the cyclist's fault).
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