Human rights – Independent police complaints commission – Police detention – Severe injuries – Scope of statutory duty

R (on the application of Graeme Reynolds) (appellant) v Independent Police Complaints Commission (respondent) and Chief Constable of Sussex (interested party): CA (Civ Div) (Lords Justice Ward, Longmore, Jackson): 22 October 2008

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) appealed against a decision ([2008] EWHC 1240 (Admin)) that, when investigating whether the respondent (R) had suffered serious injury at the hands of the police while in police custody, it had the power and the duty to investigate whether some event before the arrest may have caused or contributed to R’s injury.

A taxi driver had sought police assistance when R, his passenger, apparently affected by drugs or drink, appeared confused and refused to pay. When R became abusive the police forced him to the ground; a crack was heard, indicating that R might have hit his head. He was taken into custody, where he went into a coma several hours later. Although he eventually regained consciousness, he had suffered severe paralysis and cognitive impairment. The police asked the IPCC to investigate events following police involvement and they agreed to investigate the earlier events themselves. With the intention of preventing the police from conducting such an investigation, R applied for judicial review seeking a declaration that the IPCC had jurisdiction to investigate the events which had taken place before he was arrested and detained. The IPCC submitted that: (1) the Police Reform Act 2002 did not give it the power to investigate matters occurring before the police became involved. Investigating whether R had been injured before then would have meant investigating whether a crime had been committed, which was a matter for the police, not the IPCC; (2) the European Convention on Human Rights 1950 did not require an ‘independent’ inquiry into any serious injury inflicted by any person other than as agents of the state. If potentially lethal force was used by a member of the public it was only necessary to have an ‘effective official enquiry’, and it was for the police to conduct that enquiry.

Held: (1) The IPCC had both a power and a duty to investigate cases of death or serious injury in police custody under section 10 and schedule 3, paragraph 14D of the act. It had become apparent while R was in custody that he had suffered a serious injury. That could have been caused when R’s head hit the ground at the time of arrest; it could also have been caused before he came into contact with the police. It was not possible to determine whether the conduct of the police had caused the injury without evaluating any evidence that indicated an alternative cause, and that included any possible cause which might have occurred before police contact. That did not mean that the IPCC had to conduct a criminal investigation: the alternative cause might not have been a criminal act.

(2) Convention jurisprudence had decided that if rights under article 2 or 3 had been infringed, the state must have an effective system of investigation into the infringement. In the case of serious injury allegedly inflicted by the police, an independent inquiry was necessary and the IPCC had the power and the duty to determine the form of that investigation. The IPCC would sometimes be required to investigate whether serious injury was caused by the police or by someone or something else. That inquiry into causation was a single inquiry; it could not be suggested that part of the inquiry had to be independent of the police but part of it did not have to.

Appeal dismissed.

Richard Clayton QC, Ben Brandon (instructed by in-house solicitor) for the appellant; Sam Grodzinski (instructed by Hickman & Rose) for the respondent; Richard Perks (instructed by Litigation & Advocacy Section Legal Services) for the interested party.