On July 13, 1959, Detective Sergeant Raymond Purdy of the Metropolitan Police died in the line of duty in Kensington, in west London. Three days later detectives arrested Guenter Fritz Erwin Podola, a 30-year-old man from Berlin who had emigrated to Canada before coming to England, and he was charged with the sergeant's murder. Under the Homicide Act of 1957 the murder of a police officer acting in the execution of his duty was capital murder, and it carried a single sentence.
The case is remembered less for the death itself than for what happened in court. Podola said that he could remember nothing of his life before his arrest, and his counsel asked that he be found unfit to stand trial at all. It was the first time an English court had been asked to treat loss of memory as a bar to trial. A jury at the Old Bailey heard nine days of evidence on that single question and found against him. The jury in the trial proper convicted him of capital murder in under 40 minutes, and he was sentenced to death on September 24, 1959. The Home Secretary then sent one question in the case to the Court of Criminal Appeal, which ruled against him in October in a judgment, R v Podola, that English courts still cite on fitness to plead. The Attorney-General declined to allow a further appeal to the House of Lords, no reprieve came, and Podola was executed in London on November 5, 1959.
Podola was born in Berlin. When his trial opened in September 1959 he was 30 years old. He had emigrated from Germany to Canada and had come to England from there not long before the events of July 1959.
The victim was a detective sergeant of the Metropolitan Police. He died on duty in South Kensington on July 13, 1959.
Podola was arrested in London on Thursday, July 16, 1959, and taken to Chelsea police station. He was not charged at once. The Home Secretary later told the House of Commons that he had been held under police guard because he was "not in a fit state to be charged."
The case reached Parliament on July 20, 1959. A Labour member raised it in the House of Commons by private notice, asking the Home Secretary what had happened to Podola at the police station and why a solicitor had been refused access to him. The Home Secretary said that Podola had not asked to see a solicitor; that a solicitor who called had not been admitted because Podola was not then thought fit to see him; and that the solicitor would be given "every facility" to see him. He said he was "absolutely satisfied" that Podola had not been ill-treated at the police station, but he declined to go further, because the man had now been charged with murder and anything said in the House might prejudice his trial. Several members pressed him, and the Speaker repeatedly ruled that the conduct of the police was a matter for the courts.
The House of Lords heard the same question three days later, when a peer asked the government to open an inquiry into Podola's treatment in custody. The Lord Chancellor answered that the Home Secretary had "denied categorically" any ill-treatment at the police station, and that such injuries as Podola had suffered were sustained at the time of his arrest, a matter likely to be examined in court. He called any further comment "entirely improper" while the case was pending. Another peer replied that if police wrongdoing were later shown, there would be "ample opportunity to pursue it." The question itself recorded that Podola had been brought before the West London magistrates' court on July 20.
The argument did not end there. On July 27 a Labour member rose to ask the Speaker for guidance after Sunday newspapers had carried remarks attributed to the Home Secretary about police conduct in the case, at a time when members of the House had been asked not to discuss it. The Speaker explained the rule. Once a man had been charged he was under the protection of the courts; members speaking in the House were privileged against action in those courts, while people outside it were not, and so the House imposed on itself a restraint that did not bind anyone else. If the defense believed that a statement made outside Parliament was prejudicial, it was for the defense to take it to the judges. "It is for that reason," the Speaker said, "that this matter is outside our jurisdiction now."
Podola's trial opened at the Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey, in September 1959, before a High Court judge. Before he could be asked to plead to the indictment, his leading counsel raised a preliminary issue. The defense case was that Podola had suffered "a very, very severe fright" at the time of his arrest and that the fright had erased his memory of everything before it, including the events of July 13. A man who could not remember the events, counsel argued, could not instruct his lawyers about them, and so could not be fairly tried.
The defense did not say that Podola was insane in the ordinary sense. At no stage was it claimed that he was legally insane under the M'Naghten rules. The claim was narrower and new. Since 1800 an English jury could find a prisoner insane upon arraignment, so that he could not be tried, under section 2 of the Criminal Lunatics Act. The defense asked the court to treat a genuine loss of memory as falling within that provision. No English court had been asked to do so before.
Two questions therefore came before the court ahead of the trial proper. The first was a question of fact: was Podola genuinely suffering from hysterical amnesia, a loss of memory attributed to fear and not to injury to the brain, covering the period of the alleged crime and his arrest? The second was a question of law: if he was, did such amnesia make him insane within the meaning of section 2 of the 1800 Act, as the courts had applied it since R v Pritchard in 1836? The judge also had to decide who bore the burden of proof. He ruled that it lay on the party who claimed that the prisoner could not be tried, in this case the defense, and that the defense had to show on the balance of probabilities that Podola was not fit to stand trial.
A jury was sworn to try the preliminary issue alone, and it sat for nine days. The hearing became a trial of Podola's mind.
Police witnesses described his condition after his arrest. A detective told the jury that Podola had afterward shown "a peculiar trembling and shaking and twitching," and that his behavior at the station had been odd. The police surgeon who examined him said that at first it had been "impossible to make contact with him." Other doctors who saw him later in custody described a man who recovered gradually and who sometimes volunteered fragments of memory.
Podola gave evidence himself. He was calm and seemed detached from the proceedings, and he claimed no memory of the events in issue. Asked how he knew the penalty for capital murder, he answered, "They told me in prison." Asked how he came to know some other fact, he said, "I don't know how I know that. I just know it." Prosecuting counsel cross-examined him at length.
The medical evidence divided along the lines of the case. A neurologist called by the defense told the jury that Podola was "normally sane with the exception of memory loss," that the loss was hysterical amnesia, and that his calm detachment about his own situation was a recognized feature of the condition. The senior medical officer of the London prison where Podola was held on remand gave evidence for the Crown that the amnesia was "definitely not genuine." In his view Podola could not have played chess and the card game vingt-et-un in custody without remembering rules he had learned before, and he told the court that the defense doctors had been deceived.
Both preliminary questions were answered no. The jury found that Podola was not genuinely suffering from hysterical amnesia and that he was fit to plead and to stand trial. The judge decided the question of law the same way: hysterical amnesia did not amount to insanity within section 2 of the 1800 Act.
The full trial began the next day. Podola held to his position. He told the court, "I do not remember the crime for which I stand accused," and said that he was unable to answer the charges.
The jury retired and returned in 38 minutes. It found him guilty of the capital murder of the detective sergeant. On September 24, 1959, the trial judge noted that the murder of a police officer was capital murder and that the law prescribed only one sentence, and he passed sentence of death.
Podola's lawyers did not accept that the case was finished. A petition was submitted to the Home Secretary on his behalf, and the Home Secretary used his power under section 19(a) of the Criminal Appeal Act 1907 to refer one question to the Court of Criminal Appeal: where the burden of proof lay when a prisoner claimed to be unfit to plead. The trial judge had placed it on the defense. If he was wrong, the conviction could not stand.
A court of five judges, presided over by the Lord Chief Justice, heard the reference in October 1959 and reserved its judgment. It first had to decide whether it could hear the matter at all. A 1908 decision had suggested that a rejected plea of unfitness was not part of a conviction and so could not be appealed. The court rejected that view: a finding of fitness to plead was bound up with the conviction that followed it, and the reference was properly before the court.
The judges then held that they could not answer the Home Secretary's question in isolation. The burden of proof would matter only if a loss of memory was capable of making a prisoner unfit to plead in the first place. So the court decided that question too.
On the burden of proof it upheld the trial judge. In words the Court of Appeal would quote again in 2016, the court held that if the contention that the accused is insane "is put forward by the defence and contested by the prosecution, there is, in our judgement, a burden upon the defence of satisfying the jury of the accused's insanity." That burden, the court said, "is discharged if the jury are satisfied on the balance of probabilities." The rule ran both ways: "Conversely, if the prosecution alleges, and the defence disputes, insanity, there is a burden upon the prosecution of establishing it." In reaching that conclusion the court declared three earlier English decisions bad law and followed a different line of authority, together with the Scottish case of Russell v H.M. Advocate, decided in 1946, in which a plea in bar of trial on similar facts had been rejected.
On amnesia the court went further against Podola. The test for fitness laid down in Pritchard asked whether the prisoner was mute of malice, whether he could plead to the indictment, and whether he had sufficient intellect "to comprehend the course of proceedings on the trial, so as to make a proper defence." The Lord Chief Justice said that these tests had been followed so often that they were "firmly embodied in our law." But he read them narrowly. The direction in Pritchard, he said, "is not intended to cover a case where the prisoner can plead to the indictment and has the physical and mental capacity to know that he has the right of challenge and to understand the case as it proceeds." The word "comprehend," the court added, went no further in meaning than "understand." Podola could plead, could follow the evidence and could challenge jurors. A loss of memory of the events, even a genuine one, did not make him unfit. The court distinguished an older Scottish case in which a prisoner had been found unfit, on the ground that the prisoner there had been of unsound mind as well as without memory, while Podola could point to no actual damage to his mind.
The reference was dismissed. The judgment was reported as R v Podola [1960] 1 QB 325, and also at (1959) 43 Cr App R 220 and [1959] 3 All ER 418.
Under the law as it stood in 1959, a criminal case could go from the Court of Criminal Appeal to the House of Lords only on a certificate, or fiat, from the Attorney-General. The Attorney-General refused to grant one in Podola's case. He was a member of the government, and he had appeared for the prosecution when the reference was argued in the Court of Criminal Appeal.
The Home Secretary did not grant a reprieve. Guenter Podola was executed in London on November 5, 1959.
The Homicide Act 1957 had reduced the number of murders for which a person could be sentenced to death. Section 5 defined a short list of capital murders. One of them was "any murder of a police officer acting in the execution of his duty or of a person assisting a police officer so acting," and another was any murder done in the course or for the purpose of resisting or avoiding or preventing a lawful arrest. A person convicted of capital murder was liable to the same punishment as before the Act, and the trial judge told the court that the law left him no choice of sentence.
The fitness question rested on older law. Section 2 of the Criminal Lunatics Act 1800 allowed a jury to find a prisoner insane on arraignment so that he could not be tried, and a prisoner so found was detained during Her Majesty's pleasure. Through repeated judicial extension the courts had carried that provision beyond insanity under the M'Naghten rules, using the three Pritchard questions as the test. Podola's case asked whether it reached a prisoner who could understand the proceedings but could not remember the events they concerned. The Court of Criminal Appeal held that it did not.
The route by which his case reached that court was also specific to the period. The Criminal Appeal Act 1907 gave the Home Secretary power to refer a case, or a point in it, to the Court of Criminal Appeal, and it allowed a further appeal to the House of Lords only on the Attorney-General's certificate under section 1(6). On November 9, 1959, four days after the execution, the Home Secretary told the House of Commons in a written answer that the government intended to abolish that certificate procedure in the current session. The Administration of Justice Bill was laid before Parliament on March 8, 1960, and the Administration of Justice Act 1960 replaced the Attorney-General's fiat: under section 1, the defendant or the prosecutor could appeal from the Court of Criminal Appeal to the House of Lords with the leave of the court below or of the Lords, provided the court below certified that a point of law of general public importance was involved.
The holdings in R v Podola outlived the system that produced them. In 2016 the Court of Appeal, reviewing the law on fitness to plead in Marcantonio, set out the principles stated in Podola on the burden of proof and relied on the Lord Chief Justice's words that the Pritchard tests were "firmly embodied in our law."
The central dispute in the case was whether Podola's loss of memory was real. The defense neurologist told the jury that it was genuine hysterical amnesia, and the Crown's prison medical officer told the jury that it was "definitely not genuine." The jury on the preliminary issue found that he was not genuinely suffering from hysterical amnesia, and the Court of Criminal Appeal later held that even a genuine loss of memory of that kind would not have made him unfit to plead.
His treatment in custody was also disputed in 1959. Members of both Houses of Parliament asked whether he had been ill-treated. The Home Secretary said he was satisfied that Podola had not been ill-treated at the police station. No inquiry was opened while the case was before the courts.
Podola told the court that he could not remember the crime and could not answer the charges. The jury convicted him of capital murder, and the conviction stood.
July 13, 1959: Detective sergeant of the Metropolitan Police dies on duty in South Kensington, London.
July 16, 1959: Podola is arrested in London and taken to Chelsea police station.
July 20, 1959: Podola, charged with murder, is brought before the West London magistrates' court; his treatment in custody is raised in the House of Commons.
July 23, 1959: The House of Lords is asked to order an inquiry into his treatment in custody; the government declines while the case is pending.
July 27, 1959: The Speaker of the House of Commons explains why the case is outside the House's jurisdiction while it is before the courts.
September 1959: At the Central Criminal Court a jury hears nine days of evidence on Podola's claimed amnesia and finds him fit to plead.
September 24, 1959: A jury convicts Podola of capital murder after 38 minutes; he is sentenced to death.
October 1959: On a reference by the Home Secretary under section 19(a) of the Criminal Appeal Act 1907, the Court of Criminal Appeal holds that the burden of proving unfitness lies on the defense on the balance of probabilities and that hysterical amnesia does not make a prisoner unfit to plead.
October to November 1959: The Attorney-General refuses a certificate for an appeal to the House of Lords; no reprieve is granted.
November 5, 1959: Guenter Podola is executed in London.
November 9, 1959: The Home Secretary tells the House of Commons that the government will legislate to end the certificate procedure for appeals to the House of Lords.
1960: The Administration of Justice Act 1960 replaces the Attorney-General's certificate with leave and a certified point of law.