Girlfriend’s conviction for killing her partner by stabbing him 12 times in frenzied knife attack is quashed by Appeal Court judges
- Olivia Labinjo-Halcrow stabbed Gary Cunningham 12 times in February 2019
- Acquitted of murder but guilty of manslaughter at Birmingham Crown Court
- But Court of Appeal has quashed 18-year sentence concluding it to be ‘unsafe’
- Judges said burden of proof of self-defence had been moved to defence
A 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 in Harborne, Birmingham, 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.
Olivia Labinjo-Halcrow, 26, (left) stabbed 29-year-old Gary Cunningham (right) 12 times with a kitchen knife at her home in Birmingham, West Midlands, on February 23 this year. She was today sentenced to 18 years in jail at Birmingham Crown Court
She was subsequently given an 18-year sentence by Judge Simon Drew.
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 that 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.
Mr Cunningham slowly bled to death after the gruesome attack and was eventually discovered by a delivery driver propped up against a fire exit door (pictured, police at the scene on the morning of February 23 this year)
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.