The case was tried at Croydon Crown Court before His Honour Judge Timothy Stow Q.C. and a jury. The unusual feature of this case was the fact that, happily, Ellie had made a complete recovery from her head injury and, given the absence of either external sign of this injury or any other relevant injury, it was, therefore, a case to be tried almost entirely on the basis of medical evidence and opinion.
Thus it was that the decision to join the other incident and then to refuse to sever became more important than it might otherwise have been. The burning incident was comparatively trivial and was never suggested as having been deliberate; it was left to the jury on the basis of recklessness. Indeed, had it stood alone, there is every reason to think that it may not have been the subject of criminal prosecution at all and would have been viewed as a piece of "new parent carelessness". It is true that the Judge gave a careful direction to treat them separately but the reality is that this incident provided the only concrete example of any misdoing by the appellant and in a case such as this, it was asking a great deal of the jury to ignore it when they were considering the head injury. This court will, of course, be very slow to interfere with the exercise of a trial Judge's discretion in matters such as these but the risk referred to above left us with a sense of unease as to whether that Count should have been tried with Count 2.
Takes a while to write posts and sort the children out