The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal by the Director of Public Prosecutions against a High Court certificate that newly discovered facts showed a miscarriage of justice in the murder conviction of Yusuf Ali Abdi.
The appeal concerned a certificate under section 9 of the Criminal Procedure Act 1993, sought after Mr Abdi was acquitted at a 2019 retrial. The High Court granted the certificate in September 2020. The Court of Appeal upheld that decision in a judgment delivered electronically on 23 August 2021.
Mr Abdi had been convicted by a 10-2 majority in the Central Criminal Court in May 2003 of murdering his 20-month-old son, Nathan. The central issue at trial was whether he was legally sane when the child died from head injuries. Defence psychiatrists said he had paranoid schizophrenia and was legally insane; a prosecution psychiatrist disagreed. The Court of Criminal Appeal dismissed his conviction appeal in 2004.
In 2019, the Court of Appeal had quashed the conviction and directed a retrial after finding that Mr Abdi’s psychiatric history and treatment after the conviction were newly discovered facts with the potential to affect how the trial evidence was assessed. That decision did not conclusively determine whether a miscarriage of justice had occurred.
At the retrial, held in December 2019, the psychiatric experts agreed that Mr Abdi had schizophrenia when he killed his son and that the appropriate verdict was not guilty by reason of insanity. The jury returned that verdict after a short deliberation. Mr Abdi then applied for the section 9 certificate, which is a prerequisite to seeking compensation from the Minister for Justice; the judgment does not award compensation.
The Director challenged whether the retrial verdict counted as an acquittal for section 9 and whether the evidence established a miscarriage of justice. The Court of Appeal agreed with the High Court that the verdict was an acquittal in law. It also accepted that the decisive development was the experts’ agreement at the retrial: a diagnosis that had been disputed at the first trial had become accepted by the time of the retrial.
The court concluded that Mr Abdi had killed his son while suffering from schizophrenia and was not legally sane at the time. It said he should never have been convicted and that the murder conviction was “wrong in a fundamental aspect”. The appeal was dismissed.
The court gave a provisional view that the unsuccessful appellant should pay the appeal costs. It invited either party to make short written submissions within 10 days or request a short oral hearing. The judgment does not state a final costs order.