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Nottingham attacks
University of Nottingham students Grace O’Malley-Kumar, Barnaby Webber and school caretaker Ian Coates were all stabbed to death by Valdo Calocane in the early hours In June 2023
Crown Prosecution lawyer Alan Murphy has denied a decision to charge spree killer Valdo Calocane with manslaughter rather than murder was “rushed”.
The legal professional also told the Nottingham Inquiry that it did not mean the CPS did not think he had no intention to kill and instead thought “quite the opposite”
Mr Murphy was questioned over his role after three people were stabbed to death by spree killer Valdo Calocane on the streets of Nottingham.
Now in its sixth week, the Nottingham Inquiry, which is being held in London, is examining all the circumstances which led up to Calocane taking the lives of three people and leaving three others seriously injured.
University of Nottingham students Grace O’Malley-Kumar, Barnaby Webber and school caretaker Ian Coates were all stabbed to death by Valdo Calocane in the early hours of June 13, 2023.
The killer then took Mr Coates’ van from where he killed him in Magdala Road and deliberately drove it into Wayne Birkett, Sharon Miller and Marcin Gawronski in the city centre as they went to work.
Following his horrific rampage Calocane, formerly of Burford Road, Forest Fields, was initially charged with three counts of murder and three of attempted murder in relation to the six victims.
But after a number of medical experts assessed the paranoid schizophrenic’s mental state, it was concluded that he had what is called “a partial defence” of diminished responsibility.
As such, after reviewing the evidence the CPS took a decision to accept his guilty pleas to a lesser charge of manslaughter in relation to Grace, Barnaby and Ian.
Follow our live updates from the hearing at Mary Ward House below.
The inquiry has finished for the day and will now not be sitting until after the Easter break. Many thanks for following it today, we hope you found it interesting and informative.
Julian Blake KC, for the inquiry, questioned Dr Frank Farnham, a forensic psychiatrist for North London NHS Foundation Trust.
He explained how the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre (FTAC) is a joint NHS and Metropolitan Police Service team which manages threats posed to protected public figures and protected sites by fixated, lone, individuals.
Information was passed onto the centre when VC pressed an intercom at the HQ of MI5 asking to be arrested in May 2021 but his case “did not reach the threshold for further FTAC involvement”.
Julian Blake KC, counsel for the Inquiry, questioned Crown Prosecution Service lawyer Michelle Mannion.
He said: “We have seen there are two defence reports that are not based on the full prosecution material and we’ve heard from Dr Blackwood. In your view is there some evidence that could potentially have been used to rebut the defence of diminished responsibility?”
She replied: “No, because I am not a forensic psychiatrist.”
Counsel aksed: “Do you place entire weight on forensic psychiatry in the assessment as to whether to leave something to a jury or nit?”
She said: ”No.”
He said: “Even if all three psychiatrists come to the same conclusion the CPS does not have to accept. Do you agree with that?”
She replied: “I agree.”
Mr Blake asked: “In light of all the information, would you accept there would be some prosecutors may have left that to a jury in certain circumstances?”
Ms Mannon said: “There are a number of things contained in that if you would break the question down for me.”
He asked: “Are there other prosecutors, in your opinion, who may well have pushed for the matter to be left to a jury?”
She replied: “Mr Murphy is an extremely experienced, specialist, prosecutor known for his legal knowledge and judgement and I don’t think it is appropriate for me to discuss what other prosecutors would do.
“The decision was not universally made by Mr Murphy. The decision was approved by Ms (Samantha) Shallow, the Chief Crown Prosecutor as well as our director of legal services.
“All are in agreement with this decision.”
Sophie Cartwright KC, for Mr Birkett and Miss Miller, asked the witness about how, during the sentencing hearing, a “deeply upsetting” meeting between the CPS and some of the family members took place in a “small windowless room” which was “far from ideal”.
Ms Mannion replied: “It was. If Mr Birkett is unhappy with the service we have provided him that is serious.”
Adam Straw, for Calocane’s mother and brother, said: “You said earlier that on the morning of June 14, 2023, it had become clear that mental health issues were going to play a part.”
Mr Murphy replied: “Yes, because when we attended the briefing at the police station the police already had access to mental health records and so I was aware there had been a previous section so that is why it was very clear to me there were very clear mental health issues.”
Counsel said: “Would you describe Dr Blackwood’s five-hour interview with VC as exceptionally thorough?”
He replied: “Yes.”
The lawyer asked: “Were you satisfied that Prof Blackwood had explained his conclusions of diminished responsibility.”
Mr Murphy replied: “Yes I was very satisfied he’d done so.”
Jacqueline Carey KC, for the CPS, asked Mr Murphy: “Was there any rush or pressure to make the decision to accept the pleas to diminished responsibility in relation to the three murder counts?”
He replied: “No.”
She asked: “Even if families don’t like, don’t understand or agree with the decision with whom does the decision lie?”
Mr Murphy replied: “The CPS.”
Ms Carey asked: “Does the fact that the CPS accepted the plea mean the CPS accept that VC lacked an intent to kill?”
He replied: “Quite the opposite. A plea to manslaughter on diminished responsibility means the mens rea of murder is present and an attempt to kill rather than an intent to cause GBH was our case from start to finish.”
Sophie Cartwright KC, for survivors Wayne Birkett and Sharon Miller, said: “There are two notes where the victim and the victim’s partner have said they want a meeting and none has been arranged, Now you say they’re dependent on the FLOs.”
He replied: “Yes, I relied on the FLOs. I’m waiting for or relying on the FLO to arrange the meeting.”
She said: “Did you give any thought to inviting Wayne Birkett and his partner to a subsequent meeting (following the one with the Webbers and O’Malley-Kumars on November 24, 2023)?”
Mr Murphy replied: “They were contacted by the FLOs as I understand it at the same time as the Coates and I understand they declined a meeting.”
Ms Cartwright said: “But that flies in the face of them requesting a meeting.”
She asked: “Why, when the sentencing was coming up, did it not remind you there had still not been a meeting with Wayne Birkett and, similarly, give any consideration to Sharon Miller?”
He said: “Again we are relying on the FLOs. We’ve got a sentencing and do they want a meeting? Are they attending court? Neither Tracey nor Marcin were intending to attend the hearing and didn’t want to engage with us and we understood it, which was perfectly understandable.”
Ms Cartwright said there was a meeting with Mr Birkett and his partner during the sentencing hearing in January 2024.
She said: “It was a confusing meeting and an afterthought
Mr Murphy replied: “It definitely wasn’t an afterthought. I don’t think it was rushed.”
Ian Maloney KC, for the bereaved families, asked Mr Murphy about the psychiatric reports.
He said: “Did it concern you that Dr Blackwood hadn’t looked at the papers?”
Mr Murphy replied: “I thought his report was balanced.”
Counsel asked; “You heard what Dr Blackwood said yesterday about the vital importance of reading the prosecution’s papers before venturing an opinion. Do you agree with that?”
He said: “If Dr Blackwood says so then yes.”
Asked about the terrorist and mass shooting videos found on VC’s phone after it was seized and analysed, Mr Murphy replied: “The psychiatrists answered this yesterday, they’re the professionals, they’re the experts in that field.”
Mr Maloney asked: “When you received Dr Blackwood’s report were you concerned that he didn’t say he’d reviewed the phone downloads?”
He replied: “He had the phone downloads because I sent them to him.”
Ms Langdale asked about the decision to accept pleas to manslaughter on diminished responsibility just four days before a meeting with the families rather than forge ahead with a trial for three counts of murder.
Counsel said: “There was a sense this was a rush, the family felt this was rushed.”
Mr Murphy replied: “I can understand why they think this was a rush.”
Counsel said: “There was a meeting on Jan 15, 2024 (ahead of sentence) and this is with two of the bereaved families. The Coates’ sons aren’t at this particular meeting.”
He replied: “We offered all of the family meetings and that offer was open-ended throughout the duration of the proceedings. Whether the families wanted to have meetings with us or not is plainly a matter for them. It was not a matter of excluding the Coates at all. The O’Malley-Kumars and the Webber family had clearly formed a bond and wanted their meetings with us to be joint meetings and so we facilitated that.
Mr Murphy was asked about the survivors in the case. He said: “From our perspective they most definitely were not overlooked because we knew they had FLOs (police family liaison officers) and in my experience most FLOs are very good.”
Ms Langdale said Dr Kumar in an email argued that VC’s defence team did not want the CCTV of the attacks to be played at the sentencing hearing “to reduce the public disgust and to protect the defendant and the ugliness of his actions to be reported and presented in court”. She said Dr Kumar’s email read: “I don’t want to watch it and I don’t want to see it on the news (but) can we agree it should be played in court?”
Counsel then asked Mr Murphy about a decision to hold the three-day sentencing hearing inside courtroom one where at least one of the survivors had to walk straight past Calocane where he was sitting on the dock. She said: “Do you think the courtroom was big enough or equipped to deal with the various sensitivities involved in this?”
Mr Murphy replied: “I thought it was, it’s the biggest courtroom at Nottingham Crown Court and it is large.”
Ms Langdale asked Mr Murphy about meetings set up with the families on November 24, 2023.
She said ahead of it Karim Khalil KC, the barrister who prosecuted at Nottingham Crown Court in January 2024, said he would explain to them the difference between the potential disposals of a hybrid order (which has an element of punishment) and a straight hospital order (which VC was handed)
Counsel said: “Were you party to any discussion about any CCTV (of the attacks) that might be played?”
Mr Murphy replied: “This is the first discussion about this with the families, yes.”
Ms Langdale said: “It is really important the CCTV, who sees it, what the impact would be not just on them but sentencing and generally.”
He said: “Yes, again you would have to ask Mr Khalil but I think that was the point. It is incredibly impactive footage.”
Ms Langdale said: “In an email between (senior CPS prosecutor) Samantha Shallow she said Detective Sanders had a meeting with the O’Malley-Kumars and they asked if they could have copies of the psychiatric report and we (the CPS) said no. Was there a problem letting the O’Malley-Kumar’s see the report?”
Mr Murphy replied: “Sam Shallow will have to answer that but we took advice from leading counsel. Because of the concern Sam had passed on to us from Dr Kumar (namely) that the psychiatric report may not have focussed on VC’s mental health at the time of the offences and instead focussed on his mental health at the time of the interviews in custody. As a result I was asked to review all three reports. It was Dr Kumar’s view that the mental state must have deteriorated over time and that was not necessarily true and the question was whether (the psychiatrists) had based their assessment of his mental health in custody (and not at the time of the killings). What we didn’t want to happen in this case was for the families not to have confidence in the decision we were making. We would never want and so we got to a point where a suggestion is made to both deal with the concerns raised by Dr Kumar and to hopefully allow those affected by this confidence that the decision making was correct.”
Ms Langdale said: “What is the pressure in terms of court date? Because here we are in November. What pressure were you placing on yourself as prosecutors? It was a complex case.”
He replied: “Well we did get time because, of course, we had another three weeks. There was a trial date in January (2024), we’ve got a high court judge booked and there were custody time limits in operation.”
Ms Langdale said: “You seem diligent (but) but do you agree it appears rushed and reasonable questions were being raised by the families?”
Mr Murphy said: “We had a very thorough, in my view, report from CDr Blackwood and we were going to get another report so if we needed more time we’d have asked for it but we didn’t If (the other psychiatric reports) had come back and said ‘no, Dr Blackwood has got it wrong’ or had taken the wrong approach then we would have followed that, but they didn’t.”
Alan Murphy, from the Crown Prosecution Service, answered questions put to him by Rachel Langdale KC, counsel for the inquiryAlan Murphy, from the Crown Prosecution Service, answered questions put to him by Rachel Langdale KC, counsel for the inquiry.
She asked him: “You set out the charging decisions and how you were asked to deal with charges?”
He replied: “At the police station we discussed the likely timetable in terms of how long it was going to take the police to get whatever evidence they could get ahead of charging. The police provided me with a decent chunk of evidence by the Thursday (two days after the killings) and I reviewed it and started to draft my charging decision. I became aware the police were suggesting that I had given them verbal authorisation to charge (called an emergency charging decision) which I hadn’t and I didn’t need to. Ultimately I charged at 3.24pm in the afternoon and I received a call from Leigh Sanders (police officer) apologising for what had happened with the emergency charging business. I wasn’t particularly happy about it but it had been done.”
Miss Langdale asked: “Why do you think he did that?”
He replied: “I got the impression that the police were under pressure from the press and possibly the families to effectively get a charging decision because he (VC) had been in custody now for the best part of three days. I could be wrong on that but that’s my recollection.”
Counsel asked: “He jumped the gun, effectively?”.
Mr Murphy replied: “Yes and he apologised for doing so.”
The witness said: “It was clear on the Wednesday (June 14) and certainly on the Friday when I got the information that mental health issues were going to play a part in the case. Officials in the head, MI6 listening to him, relevant to mental health issues.”
Ms Langdale said: “And the weapon that was used was a dagger, so what issues were you highlighting in relation to weapons?”
Mr Murphy said: “Intent to ill.”
Asked about imparting information about the partial defence of diminished responsibility, he replied: “The best was about imparting information about a partial defence such as diminished responsibility is from lawyers in the case.”
Mr Murphy said there was then communication between him and Andrew Baxter, the then deputy Chief Crown Prosecutor, in which it was discussed about queries relating to VC’s background such as his seeming intelligence and university degree as well as a past violent episode from 2022.
Ms Langdale said Dr Blackwood’s report (psychological assessment on VC) arrived on November 20, 2023, ahead of a meeting on November 23. In it she said the leading counsel asked “do we accept the joint opinion from the reports?”
Mr Murphy said: “When I came to my ultimate decisions about the case I was careful to always look for supporting evidence and not simply rely on what VC was saying to anyone. This meeting was to decide if counsel, CPS, were prepared to accept pleas to manslaughter on diminished responsibility if they were offered as they were plainly likely to be.”
Ms Langdale said: “Do you think it would have been better to have meetings with the families before you had a discussion about the pleas?”
He replied: “No I don’t because this was a legal decision. We have to make it and so, no, I think the families want to know what we’ve decided.”
Counsel asked: “You were meeting with the families the next day so in terms of timing if you swapped the dates around you would have had the benefit of their views.”
Mr Murphy replied: “The purpose of having the meeting on November 23 was to make the decision so that it could be imparted to the families on November 24.”
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In the inquiry’s opening statement, it was said how the day after the attack, CPS prosecutors Alan Murphy and Samantha Shallow attended a briefing with police at Radford Road Police Station at which the available evidence was presented and discussed.
It said according to Mr Murphy, it was clear from the morning briefing that “mental health was undoubtedly going to be a feature of this case” and there was reference to VC having been detained under the Mental Health Act, among other things.
On the afternoon of June 16, 2023, Mr Murphy authorised that VC be charged with three offences of murder and three offences of attempted murder.
However, after a number of psychiatrists all assessed him and concluded he might have a partial defence of diminished responsibility to that charge, it was downscaled to three counts of manslaughter against Grace, Barney and Ian.
VC pleaded guilty to those charges and was handed a hospital order rather than being sent to prison.
He has been held at high-security mental health facility Ashworth Hospital, in Merseyside, ever since.
Dr Kumar slammed much of the evidence Prof Blackwood told the inquiry accusing him of “ignoring key pieces of evidence”.
He said much of VC’s past medical records were not read which he says may have provided a better insight into the paranoid schizophrenic’s mindset at the time he stabbed his victims to death.
Dr Kumar said: “Someone who is making a decision on what is the most important matter in our lives has not asked for key pieces of evidence in order for him to make his assessment and reach his conclusions.
“Did he ask to see previous medical notes? No.
“He said VC told him that voices in his head told him he had to assault a co-worker (during a previous, earlier, incident). Did he explore that? No.
“A key thing we agree on and this is something we have never argued about is VC’s diagnosis.
“We say he was relapsing at the time (of the attacks) but Blackwood disagrees, he says ‘no this is all his psychosis’.
On Monday, three psychiatrists who all assessed VC, as the inquiry is calling the spree killer, all faced questions from a number of lawyers involved in the inquiry.
Dr Nigel Blackwood, a professor of forensic psychiatry at Kings College London, was instructed by the prosecution to assess Calocane’s mental state.
He confirmed he prepared two reports for the criminal proceedings.
Asked by Rachel Langdale KC, counsel for the inquiry: “Is there anything in his behaviour that you view as manipulation?”
Prof Blackwood replied: “Well being manipulative is being aware of what an individual is seeking and while being aware of that, going out of your way to frustrate that aim.
“So there is nothing in his police interviews I would ascribe to manipulation.”
That was later criticised by Dr Sanjoy Kumar, Grace’s father, who told Nottinghamshire Live: “Everything we have seen shows that VC was highly manipulative, but Blackwood says this is not manipulation and instead it is a lack of insight.”
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