R v Gregory Anthony Twigg [2026] EWCA Crim 1052

WARNING: reporting restrictions may apply to the contents transcribed in this document, particularly if the case concerned a sexual offence or involved a child. Reporting restrictions prohibit the publication of the applicable information to the public or any section of the public, in writing, in a broadcast or by means of the internet including social media. Anyone who receives a copy of this transcript is responsible in law for making sure that applicable restrictions are not breached. A person who breaches a reporting restriction is liable to a fine and/or imprisonment. For guidance on whether reporting restrictions apply, and to what information, ask at the court office or take legal advice. This Transcript is Crown Copyright.  It is not to be reproduced in whole or in part other than in accordance with relevant licence the express consent of the Authority.  All rights are reserved.Case No 20225/03201/B5Venue Royal Courts of JusticeStrandLondonWC2A 2LLNeutral Citation No. [2026] EWCA Crim 1052
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
Date Thursday 23 July 2026
Between
R EXCrown
ON APPEAL FROM THE CROWN COURT AT STAFFORD
HIS HONOUR JUDGE ROGER THOMAS KC
21GN0511224
B e f o r e:
LADY JUSTICE ANDREWS
SIR ROBIN SPENCER
HER HONOUR JUDGE KARU
(Sitting as a Judge of the Court of Appeal Criminal Division)
____________________
- v –
Between
GREGORY ANTHONY TWIGG____________________Computer Aided Transcription of Epiq Europe Ltd,Lower Ground Floor, 46 Chancery Lane, London WC2A 1JETel No: 020 7404 1400; Email: rcj@epiqglobal.co.uk (Official Shorthand Writers to the Court)___________________Mr A Hossain KC appeared for AppellantMr E Pinnock appeared for Crown___________________J U D G M E N T
[1]At around 11.30 pm on 24 June 2022, Lee Woodward left a public house called the Liquor Vaults in Stoke-on-Trent and walked down Trade Street towards Hill Street. The appellant, Gregory Twigg, was a passenger in a Vauxhall Astra car which arrived at some speed at the junction of those two roads. There was a verbal exchange between Mr Woodward and the occupants of the car through the car window. The car driver, Nathan Lockley, turned into Trade Street and parked up. Mr Woodward turned around and walked back up Trade Street as his fiancée, Kate Griffin, came out of the pub. Mr Woodward was approached by Mr Lockley and there was a further conversation. At that point the appellant got out of the car and approached the two men.[2]What happened next was captured on CCTV. As Mr Woodward was facing Mr Lockley, the appellant approached Mr Woodward from the side and punched him in the head. He went on to punch him in the head twice more. He also punched – or at least pushed – Miss Griffin. The third punch to Mr Woodward's head, which was landed despite the efforts of others to stop the appellant, knocked Mr Woodward to the ground. He struck his head on the road as he fell, causing a contrecoup injury. As he lay there unconscious, the appellant and Mr Lockley got back into the car and drove off.[3]Door staff from the pub came out to help, as did paramedics, who took Mr Woodward to hospital. He underwent surgery, with limited success, and was put on a life-support machine.[4]On 25 July 2022, in the Crown Court at Stoke-on-Trent, the appellant pleaded guilty to an offence of causing grievous bodily harm with intent, contrary to section 18 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861. He also pleaded guilty to an offence of common assault against Miss Griffin. On 22 September 2022, he was sentenced to an extended sentence of 11 years and three months, comprising a custodial term of eight years and three months and an extended licence period of three years. A concurrent term of four months' imprisonment was passed for the assault on Miss Griffin.[5]Sadly, Mr Woodward died from his head injuries on 26 April 2023, which led to the appellant being charged with murder.[6]On 10 July 2025, following a trial in the Crown Court at Stafford before His Honour Judge Roger Thomas KC and a jury, he was convicted of murder. The appellant now appeals against that conviction with the leave of the single judge. The single ground of appeal is that the judge failed to give a proper direction to the jury as to how they should approach the issue of the previous conviction.[7]At trial it was accepted on the medical evidence that the third punch caused Mr Woodward's death. The sole issue for the jury was whether, when he landed that punch, the appellant intended to cause Mr Woodward really serious injury. The prosecution case on intention was that the appellant had lost control and had attacked the deceased in anger. The Crown relied on the CCTV evidence to demonstrate that Mr Woodward posed no threat to the appellant, the force of the punches, and that the appellant continued his attack despite the efforts of others to stop him, all of which they said evidenced an intention to cause really serious injury.[8]The appellant's guilty plea to the section 18 offence was relied upon as part of the factual matrix. The Crown's position was that he had entered that plea because he had genuinely and unequivocally accepted that he had intended to cause really serious injury. The defence disputed this on the basis that the appellant had pleaded guilty on advice, and that he did not accept that he had intended to cause really serious injury, despite that being an element of the offence.[9]The appellant maintained that he only intended to cause bruising from the punches that he delivered. He gave evidence at trial that Mr Woodward was threatening and aggressive, and that he just wanted him to leave him and his friends alone. He did not intend to cause him really serious harm. He pleaded guilty because he felt bad about what he had done.[10]The appellant's case, as ably presented today by Mr Hossain KC, is that the trial judge should have given a direction to the jury of the type referred to in R v Caine [2024] EWCA Crim 225. Caine was a case where evidence of previous convictions for unrelated offences had been admitted as evidence of propensity under section 101(1)(d) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The defendant in that case denied that he had committed those offences of which he had been found guilty after a trial. The judge had directed the jury that they must work on the basis that the defendant was correctly convicted. That was plainly an error of law. Section 74(3) of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 ("PACE") creates a statutory presumption that the accused committed the offence of which he or she has been convicted, unless the contrary is proved.[11]The Court of Appeal accepted the submission in Caine made by the appellant's counsel that the judge ought to have left the issue to the jury and directed them that if they accepted the defendant's evidence, they should treat the previous convictions as being incapable of providing any evidence supporting the prosecution's allegations in the case that they were trying.[12]In our judgment, Caine affords no assistance. The evidence that the appellant pleaded guilty to a section 18 offence in respect of the blow that turned out to be fatal, was not admitted as bad character evidence under any of the gateways in section 101(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. It could not have been bad character evidence, because evidence which has to do with the alleged facts of the offence with which the defendant is charged is excluded from the definition of bad character by section 98 of the 2003 Act. The directions that would be given in respect of a conviction for an earlier offence unrelated to the offence charged, which is admitted as evidence of propensity and disputed by the defendant, are therefore inapposite.[13]The situation in the present case is much closer to that in R v Northey [2011] EWCA Crim 1695. Mr Northey had entered a late guilty plea to a section 18 offence against his partner, who subsequently died from a head injury caused in that incident. He appealed against his conviction on the section 18 offence on the basis that he had not truly intended to plead guilty. He said that he had given his account of events to his solicitors and counsel, which was that he had acted in self-defence and was unaware that the victim had struck her head, but that they had told him that no one would believe him and that he would almost inevitably be convicted and therefore he should plead guilty.[14]The Court of Appeal on that occasion heard evidence from Mr Northey and from trial defence counsel. They concluded that when Mr Northey pleaded guilty he knew perfectly well what he was doing. However, at the end of their judgment, at [42], they acknowledged that he was due to stand trial for murder, and that should the jury in that trial be informed about his guilty plea to the section 18 offence, it would be Mr Northey's intention to air the same issues before them. Therefore the Court of Appeal made an order prohibiting the release of their judgment until after the murder trial.[15]At the ensuing murder trial, the prosecution sought to adduce the fact of Mr Northey's plea of guilty to the section 18 offence under section 74(3) of PACE, as evidence relevant to proof of causation of the injuries inflicted on the deceased and of Mr Northey's state of mind when he inflicted them. Mr Northey unsuccessfully resisted that application. He appealed against his conviction for murder on the basis that the judge should not have allowed the evidence of the guilty plea to go before the jury. The Court of Appeal ([2012] EWCA Crim 2453) dismissed the appeal. In the course of doing so, they commended the trial judge's directions to the jury, which included the following:
"23. The defendant says that although he entered this guilty plea, he did so as a result of inadequate legal advice and that he did not fully understand the implications of the charge. We look together in due course at the circumstances in which he came to enter that guilty plea. 24. The fact that he pleaded guilty to this charge contrary to section 18 does not of itself mean that he is guilty of murder. Nor does it, of itself, prove that he was acting unlawfully or that he did intend to cause her really serious bodily harm. The burden of proof remains fairly and squarely on the prosecution to make you sure of those things on all the evidence in the case. 25. The prosecution are of course entitled to invite you to attach considerable weight to the fact of this guilty plea, carrying with it as it did an admission of an unlawful assault and an admission of intending to do her really serious bodily harm. But in the end, it is for you to decide how far this evidence takes you. You have quite properly heard a good deal of evidence about the circumstances in which the plea was entered. If, having considered that evidence carefully, you think that the defendant was or may have been under a misapprehension as to what it was he was admitting by pleading guilty, so that his confession was or may have been unreliable, you should ignore it and concentrate on the other evidence in the case. Only if you are sure that he knew perfectly well what he was admitting to by his plea of guilty should you treat that plea of guilty as providing support for the prosecution case against him now."
[16]In the present case, as in Northey, the evidence of the earlier conviction was admitted under section 74(3) of PACE as part of the factual matrix. The evidence of the guilty plea was plainly of relevance as it had to do with the facts of the offence with which the appellant was charged. There was no dispute about its admissibility. Unlike Northey, however, there was no contested evidence about the circumstances in which the guilty plea came to be entered. The appellant gave evidence in which he explained why he had pleaded guilty, and the judge correctly directed the jury that by giving evidence, he had not adopted any burden of proving his innocence.[17]As HH Judge Thomas recognised, to have given the jury a direction on the rebuttable presumption that he committed the section 18 offence unless he proved the contrary on the balance of probabilities would have caused confusion and districted them from deciding the simple issue that they had to decide, namely, "Are you sure that when he struck the final punch, the [appellant] intended to cause really serious injury?" Indeed, there is a real danger that if the jury had been directed that it was for the appellant to prove on the balance of probabilities that he did not intend to admit that he intended to cause really serious injury when he pleaded guilty to an offence which requires such an intention, it would have made matters worse for the appellant.[18]In Northey, the direction given to the jury was that only if they were sure that the defendant knew perfectly well what he was admitting to by his plea of guilty to the section 18 offence, should they treat it as providing support for the prosecution case. That was in line with the way that the Court of Appeal had directed themselves in the earlier appeal against conviction in the same case, and properly maintained a focus on the fact that it was for the Crown to prove the necessary intent for murder. A direction of that kind is a very helpful direction, and one which it would be wise for judges to follow in this context.[19]Although the judge did not give a similar direction in the present case, it was unnecessary for him to do so because the jury were repeatedly told that it was for the prosecution to prove that the appellant intended to cause Mr Woodward some really serious bodily harm. In any event, that is not the direction that was sought by Mr Hossain. Nor is it the direction that he contends in his Advice and Grounds of Appeal that the judge should have given.[20]There would only be a legitimate cause for concern if at any point in his directions the judge had given the jury the impression that because the appellant had pleaded guilty to the section 18 offence, including the intent to cause really serious harm, he must necessarily be guilty of murder. Mr Hossain, in his oral submissions today, took the court to extracts from the judge's summing up. He submitted that they may have given such an impression. In our judgment, they gave precisely the opposite impression. They made it very clear to the jury that the plea of guilty was simply one of the elements of the evidence which they had to take into account in determining whether or not the prosecution had proved the necessary intent.[21]The whole tenor of the legal directions and the summing up was contrary to any suggestion that the plea of guilty would necessarily make the appellant guilty of murder. The jury could have been under no illusion that they had to decide the question of intent for themselves, irrespective of the guilty plea to the section 18 offence. The guilty plea and the reasons for it were just part of the factual background and the evidence in the case. The judge took great care to remind the jury of the defence case on the section 18 plea, including at the start of his summing up, immediately after he had summarised the prosecution and defence cases; and later when summing up the facts, after the closing speeches from both counsel.[22]In the course of the oral argument this morning, Mr Hossain was asked how he had put the matter to the jury and how prosecuting counsel at trial had put the matter to the jury. He very fairly said that he had reminded the jury of the defence case and said that it was a matter for them; and that prosecuting counsel had not suggested that the plea of guilty to the section 18 offence was conclusive, but rather had said that the jury could rely on it as evidence of a genuine intent to cause harm.[23]In his legal directions, the judge directed the jury that the prosecution must prove that the appellant is guilty and they must prove that he intended to cause Mr Woodward some really serious harm. He directed them that the prosecution had to make them sure. He correctly directed the jury on the difference between the intent for murder and the intent for manslaughter. He identified the crucial question as being what the appellant intended at the very time when he used the violence that caused Mr Woodward's death.[24]The judge's specific directions on intent make no reference to the section 18 conviction. He made it clear in those directions that the question for the jury was whether the prosecution had made them sure that the appellant intended to cause Mr Woodward some really serious harm. He told them to consider all the circumstances, including what the appellant did before, during and after the attack, the nature and number of the injuries inflicted, how they were caused, the consequences, his situation, and what he said at various times afterwards about his actions or what happened.

The judge concluded by saying this:

"In the end, you ask yourselves this question: Are we sure from all that we know and find to have happened that at the time Gregory Twigg assaulted Lee Woodward he must have intended to cause him some really serious harm? That is the question you have got."
[25]Standing back and considering the legal directions and the summing up as a whole, the judge could not have made it clearer that intent remained an issue solely for the jury to decide on the totality of the evidence, irrespective of the earlier guilty plea to a section 18 offence in respect of the same incident. We are therefore satisfied that there was no misdirection in this case and that the conviction is safe.[26]This appeal is therefore dismissed. ______________________________ Epiq Europe Ltd hereby certify that the above is an accurate and complete record of the proceedings or part thereof. Lower Ground Floor, 46 Chancery Lane, London WC2A 1JE Tel No: 020 7404 1400 Email: rcj@epiqglobal.co.uk ______________________________