Woman’s manslaughter conviction quashed
A BIRMINGHAM woman convicted of killing her partner in a knife attack has had her conviction quashed by Court of Appeal judges.
Delivery driver Gary Cunningham, 29, was found dead at a block of flats off Station Road, in Harborne, in February 2019. Olivia Labinjo-Halcrow, who was 26 when Mr Cunningham died, was acquitted of murder but found guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility after a trial at Birmingham Crown Court in August 2019.
She was subsequently given an 18-year sentence by Judge Simon Drew.
But three judges, who considered the case at a recent Court of Appeal hearing in London, quashed her conviction on Tuesday after concluding that it was unsafe. Lady Justice Macur, Mr Justice Nicklin and Judge Gregory Dickinson said there was a question as to whether jurors could have been sure she was not acting in self-defence.
The trial judge had given jurors a direction relating to whether evidence demonstrated that Ms Labinjo-Halcrow had been physically and sexually assaulted by Mr Cunningham.
Appeal judges said that direction was “fundamentally wrong in law”.
They said it transferred the “evidential burden” to the defence.
Lady Justice Macur said, in a written ruling, that the relationship between Ms Labinjo-Halcrow and Mr Cunningham had been “volatile and tempestuous”.
Ms Labinjo-Halcrow had said she had “no memory” of stabbing Mr Cunningham but, “accepting it was likely she had done so”, she would have been “acting in self-defence or acting with diminished responsibility or in loss of control”, said Lady Justice Macur.