A DOCUMENT detailing a court’s reasons for dismissing an appeal against the sentence of a man who brutally killed former Buchan School pupil and mother-of-two Joanna Brown makes for shocking reading.
Late last year Joanna’s estranged husband Robert Brown failed in his appeal against a 26-year sentence for her manslaughter and obstructing a coroner – the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales has now released a full statement on the reasons for that failure.
The most distressing information contained in the statement concerns the innocent role played by the couple’s young daughter, who was used by her father to unwittingly take the weapon that killed Joanna, a claw hammer, into the family’s Windsor home inside her homework bag. Her mother was bludgeoned to death with the hammer soon afterwards, while the girl and her brother were in a room two doors away.
The youngster, the statement says, also saw her father putting her mother’s body into the boot of the car in which she and her brother were then driven away from the scene of the crime. Both children were crying by the time they reached their father’s girlfriend’s house and the little girl was ‘particularly distressed’.
‘The children’s awareness of the circumstances in which their mother met her death at the hand of their father is a specific aggravating feature of the case,’ says the statement.
Joanna Brown died at her home on October 31, 2010. She and Brown were going through an acrimonious divorce at the time.
Brown – who was bringing his children back to Joanna after weekend access when he killed her – admitted manslaughter and was found not guilty of murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility at his trial in June last year. During the trial the jury heard Brown believed he had been ‘stitched up’ by a prenuptial agreement.
Evidence was given that after he killed his estranged wife he bundled her body into the boot of his car and later dumped it in a makeshift coffin in nearby Windsor Great Park.
The jury accepted Brown’s argument that mental problems at the time had affected his self control – but the judge commented how the disorder disappeared ‘moments after’ the defendant had killed his wife.
The Lord Chief Justice’s statement concludes Joanna was taken ‘entirely by surprise’ by the attack. It details Brown’s actions after the killing, which included wrapping her body and putting it into the back of the car, removing the CCTV recorder from the house and pulling out the phone.
‘As he drove the children back to his house, on the way, his son asked if he was taking the deceased to hospital, but he never did so, and he hever called an ambulance,’ says the statement.
It also details how, after dropping the children off, he drove to a remote part of Great Windsor Park where he had, on an earlier occasion, dug a large hole and buried a garden box. He buried Joanna in that box, after wrapping her in a surf board bag and plastic sheeting with a bin liner over her head.
‘The arrangements for digging the grave and providing the box, which in reality became a coffin, must, on any view of the facts, have preceded the attack on his wife,’ says the statement.
Brown then went home to change before going back out to dispose of his bloodstained clothing, the CCTV recorder – which would have contained footage of him putting Joanna’s body into the boot of his car – and the murder weapon. They were never found.
The statement notes the trial judge took the view that the mental disorder the prosecution successfully argued was the reason for his diminished responsibility – adjustment disorder – ‘was a mild disorder which rarely led to violence’.
‘He (the trial judge) was satisfied that, on the basis of the jury’s evidence, although the appellant’s culpability was diminished, it remained substantial,’ says the statement.
Concluding there were no grounds for a successful appeal against sentence, the statement says: ‘The facts of this case are stark. This young woman died as a result of a brutal attack in her own home within moments of greeting her children after weekend contact with their father. The weapon used for the killing was taken into the home by her innocent daughter.
‘The events, if not actually seen by the children, were witnessed by them. The lack of thought for these young children, even if in part explicable through loss of control when the violence was inflicted on their mother, is chilling.’
It continues: ‘Not a moment’s thought was given to them, or their welfare, or the impact of what he fully appreciated he had done to their mother. She, of course, was the first victim of this dreadful crime, but the children too were victims, not merely in the broad distressing sense that they had lost their mother but because they heard and saw this terrible crime unfold.
‘There was no lack of self control in the appellant’s journey to his home, leaving the children there, and then setting off in his controlled endeavours to escape the consequences of what he had done.’
At the end of last year, as Brown’s appeal against sentence failed, the friends and family of the former Buchan School pupil stepped up their campaign for reform of the UK court system.
They believe the jury did not understand the implications of expert witnesses’ testimony about Brown’s mental state and therefore made the wrong decision in finding him not guilty of murder and reaching a verdict of manslaughter.
As a result they believe the families of victims should be allowed to appeal against acquittals where it is clear expert evidence has not been properly interpreted by a jury.
Joanna’s mother, Diana Parkes, who lives in Lezayre, issued a statement saying: ‘If any good can come out of this horrendous crime it is that the law is changed to give victims’ families more power to appeal.’
There is a Facebook campaign for Joanna at: {http://facebook.com/justiceforjo|facebook.com/justiceforjo}.