Jones, Iorwerth

Iorwerth Jones was convicted by a jury of causing criminal damage to the roof of Llandovery Town Hall at Carmarthen Crown Court in September 1994. He admitted causing the damage but contended that he had a lawful excuse for carrying it out.

The judge ruled that nothing raised by the defence evidence was legally capable of amounting to a lawful excuse, and directed the jury formally to return a verdict of guilty without retiring to consider their verdict.

Mr Jones received a sentence of 12 months’ imprisonment.

Mr Jones’s application to the Court of Appeal for an extension of time to appeal his conviction was dismissed in September 1997.

After initially declining to refer his case to the Court of Appeal in 1999, the CCRC reconsidered Mr Jones’s case in the light of the decision of the House of Lords in R v Wang [2005] UKHL 9, in which the House of Lords declared that there are no circumstances in which a judge is entitled to direct a jury to return a verdict of guilty.

The CCRC referred the conviction in November 2005 after considering whether:

• a conviction which is the result of a direction by the trial judge to the jury to convict where that jury has not been permitted to retire, choose a foreman, deliberate and deliver a collective verdict, is safe and;

• Regardless of the overwhelming evidence of guilt, a jury must have opportunity to deliver its verdict if its constitutional role is not to be undermined.

The Court of Appeal quashed the conviction in June 2006.