Kenneth Noye was convicted of murder at the Central Criminal Court in London on April 14, 2000, for the death of Stephen Cameron at Swanley, Kent, on May 19, 1996. A jury rejected his claim that he had acted in self-defense, and a Lord Justice of Appeal sitting as the trial judge passed the sentence the law required for murder, life imprisonment. Noye had left England within days of the death and spent more than two years abroad before his arrest in Spain in August 1998. He fought extradition for months, was returned to stand trial, and then spent the next two decades contesting his conviction and his sentence in nearly every forum the English system offers: the Court of Appeal twice, the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the High Court on his minimum term, the Court of Appeal again on that term, and the Administrative Court on the question of his move to open conditions. He lost every challenge to the conviction. The Parole Board directed his release in May 2019, and he left custody that June, subject to a license that lasts for the rest of his life.
The 1996 conviction was not his first appearance in a murder trial. Years earlier he had been tried for the murder of a police officer, John Fordham, who died in 1985, and he was acquitted after pleading self-defense. That verdict stands, and he has never been convicted of any offense connected with that death.
Noye was born on May 24, 1947. His record before 1996 was long. At 19 he was sent to borstal training for receiving. Convictions for theft, handling, an import offense and VAT fraud followed over the next two decades, and those were dealt with by suspended sentences.
His most serious conviction before the murder came in 1986. He was found guilty of conspiracy to handle gold stolen in the Brink's-Mat robbery of 1983 and was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment. He was refused parole twice during that sentence and was released in 1994.
The death at Swanley followed a confrontation between Noye and the victim on May 19, 1996. The High Court, reviewing the case in 2010, noted that the trial evidence on exactly what happened had been conflicting. The courts that later reviewed the case described what Noye did as a deliberate act, and his own evidence at trial accepted that it was.
In May 1996, days after the death, he left the United Kingdom. The Administrative Court later recorded that he went first to France and then to Spain, where he lived until his arrest.
Noye was arrested in Spain on August 28, 1998. The arrest began a contest over his return that lasted the better part of a year. A Spanish court made an extradition order in February 1999, and Noye appealed against it without success. In all he spent about nine months in Spanish custody before he was returned to England.
The way he fought extradition mattered later. The Court of Appeal noted in 2011 that, while he resisted extradition, Noye denied any involvement in the death, and that he raised self-defense for the first time only at his trial in England. In 2013 the same court described the circumstances in plain terms: he had deliberately fled, had evaded justice for a considerable time, had contested extradition fully, and had advanced a false account in order to resist it. Those findings became the basis for refusing him any credit against his sentence for the Spanish months.
Once back in England he was held on remand until trial. The time he spent in custody in the United Kingdom before sentence came to 11 months and 24 days, and that period, unlike the Spanish custody, was later deducted from his minimum term.
The trial took place at the Central Criminal Court before a Lord Justice of Appeal and a jury. There was no dispute that Noye had caused the death. The single issue the jury had to decide was self-defense, and on that issue the burden lay on the prosecution to disprove it.
The defense case was that Noye had genuinely feared for his life after being threatened, and that he had acted in panic. The prosecution case was that he had acted deliberately because he was determined not to lose the fight, and that what he did was a disproportionate response rather than self-defense. Because Noye's own evidence accepted that the act was deliberate, the real question for the jury, as the Court of Appeal later framed it, was whether his response was proportionate to what he honestly believed he faced. The trial judge directed the jury to look at what he called the "shape of the evidence" rather than become lost in the detail of each witness's account.
On April 14, 2000, the jury convicted Noye of murder. The judge sentenced him to life imprisonment, the only sentence available for that offense.
At the time of the conviction, the period a life prisoner had to serve before he could be considered for release was fixed by the Home Secretary after receiving the views of the trial judge and the Lord Chief Justice. The trial judge reported to the Home Secretary on April 19, 2000, and recommended a tariff of 16 years. He gave no discount for the time spent in Spanish custody, because that custody was the result of Noye's own unsuccessful resistance to extradition. The Lord Chief Justice agreed that 16 years was the right figure, and on June 10, 2002, a Home Office memorandum notified Noye that his minimum term had been set at 16 years.
Noye appealed against his conviction. The Court of Appeal dismissed that appeal on October 10, 2001. Among the matters raised in the course of his challenges was an issue of non-disclosure concerning a prosecution witness, which the Court of Appeal later considered again, in combination with the pathology questions, and rejected.
In August 2003 Noye applied to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which can refer a conviction back to the Court of Appeal. The review took years. During it the Commission obtained fresh expert evidence on the medical findings, evidence that criticized the way the post-mortem examination had been carried out and the way the trial pathologist had interpreted what he found. The Commission concluded that there was a real possibility the Court of Appeal would regard the trial expert evidence as "fundamentally flawed" and no longer safe to rely on.
On October 13, 2010, the Commission referred the conviction to the Court of Appeal. The referral rested on two grounds: new evidence capable of significantly undermining the credibility of the prosecution pathologist and his evidence at trial, and a second, narrower point about the medical findings.
While the Commission was still considering the case, Noye's minimum term came before the High Court. The Criminal Justice Act 2003 had taken the setting of minimum terms away from the Home Secretary and given it to the judges, and Schedule 22 of that Act allowed prisoners whose terms had been fixed by a minister to apply for a judicial determination. Noye made that application.
A High Court judge heard it at the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Combined Court Centre and gave judgment on June 25, 2010. Noye argued that his conduct had been mischaracterized, that the victim had been the aggressor, that he had been provoked, that there had been no premeditation and no intention to kill. He asked for a term of 10 years with credit for the time in Spain. He put forward a pathology report challenging the prosecution's medical evidence and a psychological report on depression and post-traumatic stress. The Crown Prosecution Service submitted that 16 years should stand for the reasons the trial judge had given.
The judge declined to act on either report. The pathology evidence had never been tested at trial, unlike the evidence the jury had heard, and the psychological report came from a psychologist without medical qualifications after a single interview; a prisoner's welfare was in any case chiefly a matter for the Prison Service. Applying Schedule 21 of the 2003 Act, the judge took a starting point of 15 years. He recognized three mitigating features: the lack of any clear intention to kill, the lack of premeditation, and an element of self-defense that fell short of a full defense. The trial judge had taken all three into account. Against them stood aggravating features, among them the sophistication of the steps taken to avoid arrest, and Noye's previous conviction for conspiracy. "I have concluded on this review that there is no proper justification for reducing the minimum term," the judge wrote. He set the minimum term at 16 years, less the 11 months and 24 days spent in custody in the United Kingdom.
The Commission's referral was heard by the Court of Appeal, Criminal Division, on March 9, 2011, before the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales and two High Court judges. Judgment was given on March 22, 2011.
The court accepted that the prosecution pathologist had been discredited as an expert since the trial. That was not the end of the question. The test, as the court restated it, was "whether in the light of the fresh and new evidence the conviction is safe." The court heard evidence from another pathologist but declined to admit it, finding that it added nothing significant to the evidence the jury had heard. It then turned to what the jury had actually had to decide. Noye's own account at trial had established that his act was deliberate, so the medical evidence had no bearing on whether his state of mind was genuine. The issues that mattered concerned the proportionality of his response. "The real issues in this case had nothing to do with the evidence advanced by the pathologists," the court held. The diminished standing of the prosecution expert did not undermine the safety of the conviction, the narrower medical point was of trivial importance, and the court rejected the argument that the non-disclosure issue and the pathology concerns had a cumulative effect. "This appeal is dismissed."
A single judge of the Court of Appeal refused Noye leave to appeal against the 2010 minimum term decision in October 2010. Noye renewed the application, about 19 months out of time, and it was heard on March 12, 2013, before the Lord Chief Justice and two High Court judges.
The only question was whether the 16-year term should be reduced to reflect the nine months in Spanish custody. Noye's lawyers argued that the High Court had been wrong to make no allowance at all, even if the full nine months was not justified, and they put forward evidence from a Spanish lawyer that an uncontested extradition would have taken about six months. The court had reservations about that evidence but found it made no difference. Under section 47 of the Criminal Justice Act 1991, and under the provisions of the 2003 Act that replaced it, a court had a discretion to credit time spent in foreign custody awaiting extradition, and earlier authorities held that the credit could be reduced or refused where a defendant had deliberately prolonged that custody. Given the flight, the long evasion, the full contest of extradition and the false account, the discretion had been properly exercised to give no credit. The court saw no reason to interfere with either the trial judge's approach or the High Court's adoption of it, and it refused the renewed application as without merit.
Noye's minimum term expired on April 21, 2015. The Secretary of State for Justice had referred his case to the Parole Board on July 2, 2014, asking it to consider release on license and, failing that, to advise on a transfer to open conditions. A panel made up of a High Court judge and an independent member held an oral hearing on September 8, 2015. In a decision letter dated September 21, 2015, the panel refused release but recommended a move to open conditions. It found that he had made significant progress in his attitude to violence, and it described the risk that he would abscond as "inherently unlikely."
Officials advised the Secretary of State on October 14, 2015, to accept the recommendation. On November 5, 2015, the Secretary of State rejected it, gave a statement of reasons that turned on risk, and set a further review in 18 months. During the following period Noye completed a course addressing violence.
Noye sought judicial review of the rejection. A High Court judge in the Administrative Court heard the claim on January 19, 2017, and gave judgment on February 24, 2017. Five of the six grounds failed. The court held that the Secretary of State had not been required to give notice that he might reject the recommendation, that he was not bound to follow his officials' advice, that he did not need to set out an explicit balancing exercise, that he was entitled to take the 1985 matter into account, and that he had not treated Noye as guilty of it, and that he was entitled to reach his own view on the risk of absconding. The sixth ground succeeded. The panel's finding that Noye had made significant progress in his attitude to violence was a finding of fact, and the Secretary of State had departed from it without good reason, relying on Noye's appeals, which the panel had already considered. The court declined to hold that the outcome would highly likely have been the same, quashed the decision of November 5, 2015, and directed that the current Secretary of State take a fresh decision.
Noye was later moved to an open prison in Kent.
A three-member panel of the Parole Board held an oral hearing on May 9, 2019. It considered a dossier of 439 pages, a victim personal statement, and oral evidence from Noye, his probation officer and a prison psychologist. The evidence included the programs he had completed and his conduct in custody, and the panel found that his risk had been reduced to a level that could be managed in the community. "The parole board has directed the release of Kenneth Noye following an oral hearing," the Board said on May 22, 2019.
His license requires him to live at a designated address, to be of good behavior, and to report for supervision and appointments as required. It also places limits on his contacts, activities and residence and sets exclusion zones, and it requires him to continue to address defined areas of risk. He remains on license for the rest of his life. He was released in early June 2019, after almost 20 years in custody on the murder sentence.
Noye has always maintained that he acted in self-defense at Swanley. The jury rejected that defense in 2000, and the Court of Appeal upheld the verdict in 2001 and again in 2011. The 2011 challenge rested on the discrediting of the prosecution pathologist, and the court accepted that the expert had been discredited, but it held that the medical evidence did not touch the issue the jury decided, which was whether a deliberate act was a proportionate response. The High Court in 2010 recognized an element of self-defense falling short of a full defense as a mitigating feature of the murder, not as an answer to it.
He was acquitted of the 1985 murder charge. No court has found him guilty of any offense arising from that death.
May 24, 1947: Kenneth James Noye is born.
1985: A police officer dies; Noye is charged with his murder and later acquitted on a plea of self-defense.
1986: Convicted of conspiracy to handle gold stolen in the 1983 Brink's-Mat robbery; sentenced to 14 years.
1994: Released from that sentence after being refused parole twice.
May 19, 1996: The victim dies at Swanley, Kent; within days Noye leaves the United Kingdom.
August 28, 1998: Arrested in Spain.
February 1999: A Spanish court orders his extradition; his appeal fails.
1999: Returned to England after about nine months in Spanish custody.
April 14, 2000: Convicted of murder at the Central Criminal Court; sentenced to life imprisonment.
April 19, 2000: The trial judge recommends a 16-year tariff.
October 10, 2001: The Court of Appeal dismisses his appeal against conviction.
June 10, 2002: The Home Office notifies him of a 16-year minimum term.
August 2003: Applies to the Criminal Cases Review Commission.
June 25, 2010: The High Court sets the minimum term at 16 years, less time in UK custody.
October 13, 2010: The Commission refers the conviction to the Court of Appeal.
March 22, 2011: The Court of Appeal dismisses the referred appeal.
March 12, 2013: The Court of Appeal refuses his renewed application for leave to appeal the minimum term.
April 21, 2015: Minimum term expires.
September 21, 2015: A Parole Board panel refuses release and recommends open conditions.
November 5, 2015: The Secretary of State rejects the recommendation.
February 24, 2017: The Administrative Court quashes that rejection and orders a fresh decision.
May 9, 2019: Parole Board oral hearing.
May 22, 2019: The Parole Board announces it has directed his release.
June 2019: Released on life license.