R (On the Application of Wellington) (FC) (Appellant) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Respondent) (Criminal Appeal from Her Majesty's High Court of Justice), (2008)
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R (On the Application of Wellington) (FC) (Appellant) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Respondent) (Criminal Appeal from Her Majesty's High Court of Justice), (2008)
HOUSE OF LORDSSESSION 2008-09[2008] UKHL 72 on appeal from: [2007] EWHC 1109(Admin)OPINIONSOF THE LORDS OF APPEALFOR JUDGMENT IN THE CAUSER (on the application of Wellington) (FC) (Appellant) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Respondent) (Criminal Appeal from Her Majestys High Court of Justice)Appellate CommitteeLord HoffmannLord Scott of FoscoteBaroness Hale of RichmondLord CarswellLord Brown of Eaton-under HeywoodCounselAppellant:Clare Montgomery QCGareth Patterson(Instructed by Russell-Cooke Solicitors)Respondent:David Perry QCBen Watson(Instructed by Treasury Solicitors)Hearing dates:3 and 4 NOVEMBER 2008ONWEDNESDAY 10 DECEMBER 2008HOUSE OF LORDSOPINIONS OF THE LORDS OF APPEAL FOR JUDGMENTIN THE CAUSER (on the application of Wellington) (FC) (Appellant) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Respondent) (Criminal Appeal from Her Majestys High Court of Justice)[2008] UKHL 72LORD HOFFMANNMy Lords,1. The State of Missouri alleges that on 13 February 1997 the appellant Ralston Wellington committed two murders in Kansas City. According to the evidence submitted on behalf of the prosecutor, the appellant was a Jamaican drug dealer carrying on a substantial business in Jamaica, the United States and the United Kingdom. While he was staying with a woman in Kansas City, a member of her family took about US$70,000 from his room. The appellant made the woman drive him and two other Jamaicans to the house where the thief had been staying. They entered with guns firing, killed two of the occupants (one of them a pregnant young woman) and injured another. The victims do not appear to have been concerned in the theft and the money was afterwards returned by the thief.2. The appellant is charged with murder in the first degree, defined in section 565.020 of the Revised Statutes of Missouri as knowingly causing the death of another person after deliberation upon the matter. The prescribed penalties are death or imprisonment for life without eligibility for probation or parole or release except by the act of the Governor.3. On 29 January 2003 the appellant was arrested in London on a provisional warrant. The United States requested his extradition. The prosecutor in Missouri gave an undertaking that he would not seek the death penalty and after a hearing on 13 October 2003 the District Judge committed the appellant to await the decision of the Home Secretary as to whether he should be extradited. Some time was then taken up with an unsuccessful challenge to the committal by judicial review, but on 13 June 2006 the Home Secretary notified the appellant that he had ordered his extradition. This decision was also challenged by an application for judicial review, which was dismissed by the Administrative Court (Laws LJ and Davis J) on 18 May 2007: [2007] EWHC 1109. The appellant appeals to your Lordships House.4. The sole ground of challenge is that, in ordering extradition, the Home Secretary, as a public authority, acted in a way which was incompatible with the appellants Convention right under article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights not to be subjected to inhuman or degrading punishment. A sentence of life imprisonment without eligibility for parole is alleged to constitute such punishment. The order for extradition is therefore said to have contravened section 6(1) of the Human Rights Act 1998.5. The appeal raises two issues. First, whether a sentence of imprisonment for life without eligibility for parole would, if imposed in the United Kingdom, constitute an inhuman or degrading punishment. Secondly, whether it makes a difference that the sentence will not be imposed by a United Kingdom authority but by the State of Missouri.6. Before coming to the authorities in the United Kingdom and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), I shall consider the question in principle. In the Divisional Court, Laws LJ put forward a philosophical argument for treating life imprisonment without parole as inhuman or degrading (para 39(iv)):The abolition of the death penalty has been lauded, and justified, in many ways; but it must have been founded at least on the premise that the life of every person, however depraved, has an inalienable value. The destruction of a life may be accepted in some special circumstances, such as self-defence or just war, but retributive punishment is never enough to justify it. Yet a prisoners incarceration without hope of release is in many respects in like case to a sentence of death. He can never atone for his offence. However he may use his incarceration as time for ...See the full content of this document
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