The Supreme Court has dismissed Andrzej Gruchacz’s appeal against convictions for murder and false imprisonment, rejecting challenges to the jury’s assessment of CCTV images and the use of part of a prosecution witness’s statement.
The appeal concerned the death of Patryk Krupa, whose body was found in the River Shannon in June 2014 after he was taken away in a car. The prosecution case was that Gruchacz was one of two men involved in the events. No witness who could identify him gave admissible identification evidence at trial, and the jury was asked to decide whether he was the man shown in still photographs and CCTV footage.
Gruchacz argued that the jury should not have been invited to make that assessment without advance notice, and that the process lacked the safeguards of an identification procedure. The Supreme Court said there was no general rule preventing juries from assessing CCTV images as real evidence. It stressed that the quality of the material and the circumstances of each case matter, and that judges may exclude images that are poor or fleeting if there is no supporting identification evidence.
The Court also emphasised the need for caution: people can make mistakes recognising unfamiliar faces from images. It found that the trial judge had given repeated and strong warnings about those risks, including that the jury members were subject to the same weaknesses as eyewitnesses. The Court said the prosecution had intended to call identification witnesses, but some were unavailable and other proposed evidence was excluded following defence objections. It found no requirement for pre-trial notice of the possibility that the jury would assess the images.
A second issue concerned Tomasz Jaromin, who testified that he had not identified Gruchacz from a photograph, contrary to a short passage in his earlier statement. The trial judge declared Jaromin hostile under section 3 of the Criminal Procedure Act 1865, then admitted the disputed passage under section 16 of the Criminal Justice Act 2006.
The Supreme Court held that the two procedures can be used together. The statement’s admission meant it was available for the jury to consider; it did not require the jury to accept it. The jury had been warned about Jaromin’s credibility and could reject all or part of his evidence. The Court also rejected the argument that an earlier, unclear image shown to Jaromin tainted the later statement passage; evidence was that he had not recognised anyone in that image.
The Court concluded that neither ground of appeal was made out and dismissed the appeal. The judgment did not alter the convictions.