A FIGHT FOR JUSTICE AND HEALTH: THE BATTLE AGAINST A MYSTERIOUS ILLNESS.
This timeline documents the deeply troubling series of events surrounding the case of Joseph—a survivor of systemic failure and discrimination by the UK criminal justice system. After enduring a wrongful conviction in 2016, Joseph continued to face harassment, unlawful treatment, and institutional neglect. This timeline outlines critical moments in our ongoing campaign to expose the miscarriage of justice and demand accountability from the police, Crown Prosecution Service, the courts, the Prison services, and the Ministry of Justice. The fight for justice continues.
Chronology of Events
19 September 2023
1. Around 2 p.m., two identifiable individuals were caught entering Joseph’s flat using a spare key, without his knowledge or consent. These same individuals had been secretly accessing his home and poisoning his food since 2020, shortly after his release from prison. As a result, Joseph experienced a range of unexplained and debilitating medical symptoms. The matter was reported to the police immediately.
April 2024
2. Joseph contacted the police to follow up on the report. He was shocked to learn that the case had been closed. The police had recorded the incident as Joseph reported himself as having a mental health breakdown, rather than a serious criminal matter involving unlawful entry and poisoning. No investigation had been conducted. This mistreatment echoes his unlawful arrest in April 2015 and the subsequent miscarriage of justice in April 2016.
30 April 2024
3. We filed a judicial review to challenge the broader criminal justice process. The application cited procedural misconduct and discriminatory practices by authorities since April 2015, which culminated in Joseph’s wrongful conviction in April 2016. It detailed numerous breaches of mandatory procedures and statutory duties by the police, Crown Prosecution Service, criminal courts, and prison services.
16 August 2024
4. The High Court dismissed our application for judicial review.
4 September 2024 – 8 January 2025
5. We submitted the case to the Court of Appeal. However, on 8 January 2025, the Civil Division of the Court of Appeal refused to process the appeal, citing a lack of jurisdiction—despite the case clearly involving both criminal and public law matters. We were even kind enough to filed an application seeking the court to transfer any part of the case it claims it has no jurisdiction or referring the part of the matter between civil and criminal to the High Court, the court failed to do so claiming it has no jurisdiction, and went on to cite that even if it does transfer it, the criminal court too will not entertain the appeal because it too will lack jurisdiction in this case. The legal question is posed, which is not even a question at all because the law is clearly defined: Who has jurisdiction in mixed cases involving both criminal and public law matters? – Is it the Civil Division or the Criminal Division, of the Court of Appeal?
February 2025 – Present
6. We escalated the matter to the Supreme Court, challenging the Ministry of Justice for its failure to ensure proper legal treatment of the case. Our argument asserts that, due to its mixed public and criminal law elements, the Civil Appeal Court does indeed have jurisdiction. This application is still awaiting a hearing.
June 2025.
7. However, we have made the Supreme Court aware of our dissatisfaction with the supreme court review of our application “to show up some and ignored the others” on their website. https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2025-0036 . Because:
8. Joseph Maxwell Spencer’s appeal to the UK Supreme Court (Case ID: UKSC/2025/0036) challenges the Court of Appeal’s decision to dismiss his application for judicial review against the Secretary of State for Justice. Spencer contends that his conviction for sexual offences in 2016 and the subsequent imposition of a Notification Requirement Order were unjust, citing issues such as reliance on opinion evidence, destruction of exculpatory materials, and interference with his appeal process. He also alleges systemic failures within the criminal justice system, including police misconduct and prison service neglect, leading to severe physical and mental health deterioration during his incarceration. The Supreme Court’s review is limited to the criminal elements of his case, specifically the jurisdictional question of whether the Court of Appeal erred in dismissing his appeal for lack of jurisdiction under section 18(1) of the Senior Courts Act 1981. This focus excludes the civil aspects of his claims, such as alleged failures to investigate CPS and Police failures leading to his prosecution in 2015, recent poisoning incidents and mistreatment in prison between 2015 and 2020, which Spencer argues undermines the comprehensiveness of his legal redress.
9. On the ‘Narrative of the Fact” on the Supreme Court application, stated as follows:
The Appellant initially brought judicial review proceedings in the High Court (Administrative Court) challenging the entire criminal justice process, citing procedural misconduct and discriminatory practice that led to his criminal conviction on 11 April 2016 and the discriminatory events that follows. The application asserts numerous breaches of mandatory procedures by the police, CPS, criminal courts, and prison services, which collectively resulted in the Appellant’s prosecution, conviction, sentencing, and fear of foreboding till date. Whilst the Appellant’s Application does not primarily challenge the decision of the 2016 conviction itself, because the criminal conviction is merely a material consequence of the various procedural misconduct alleged in the application and not pirimary to it, but in raising procedural misconduct, discriminatory practices, and breaches of statutory duties between 2015 and 2024 ( and ongoing in 2025) by various public bodies within the criminal justice system, brought into focus the unlawfulness of the Crown Prosecution Service’s (CPS) reliance on opinion evidence contrary to the opinion rule at common law in his criminal prosecution and the subsequent imposition of the Sexual Offences Notification Requirement Order. These are matters of public law rather than strictly criminal law.
27 June 2025:
10. The Supreme Court refused our application. We were served on 30 June.
Supreme Court Refusal – ‘No Arguable Point of Law’
11.The Supreme Court provided us with no detail reason for their refusal. The three judges simply took the view that: “The application does not raise an arguable point of law.”
12. They refused permission to appeal NOT on the merits of Joseph Maxwell Spencer’s allegations, but on a procedural jurisdictional basis. This refusal effectively closed off all domestic avenues for Spencer to obtain a hearing on serious public law complaints — including State failure to investigate poisoning, ill-treatment in prison, systemic discrimination, breaches of mandatory procedures in the prosecution process, and abuse of discretion in the criminal process. These matters were not, and could not be, adequately addressed in the criminal appeals system. The failure of the UK courts to determine which domestic forum had jurisdiction amounts to a constructive denial of justice.
13. This is because:
- Spencer’s core complaint was procedural and jurisdictional, not just criminal.
- The Court of Appeal (Civil Division) refused to entertain the appeal on grounds of jurisdiction, but the Supreme Court did not review whether that refusal was lawful or procedurally fair.
- The public law aspect (e.g. State failure to investigate poisoning, prison abuse, etc.) was completely omitted in the Supreme Court’s analysis. See it here: Link.
- The Supreme Court’s review in UKSC 2025/0036 [link above] focused exclusively on whether the Court of Appeal (Civil Division) had jurisdiction over the criminal elements of Spencer’s case—while completely omitting the public law grievances such as police failure to investigate poisoning, torture in prison, and State abuse. This omission is significant: in public law, failure to dispute or adjudicate a pleaded issue is by law treated as acceptance. Thus, the Supreme Court’s silence on these public law elements implicitly concedes they fell outside the jurisdiction of the criminal courts—which reinforces Spencer’s position that the UK legal system provided no forum at all for those claims. Judicial review exists precisely to prevent such jurisdictional deadlocks—but by separating the issues, the courts failed to adjudicate either.
- The courts breached their own statutory framework by denying jurisdiction to adjudicate public law issues arising from a case that also includes criminal elements.
14. Spencer’s application for permission to judicially review the procedural misconducts and breach of mandatory procedures of the entire Criminal Justice system that affects him personally and impacts on the public generally, i.e, the Police, the CPS, the Criminal Courts and the Prison services on discriminatory practices, that application having been refused by the national court judges, is now the subject of appeal to the European Court of Human Rights to address multiple violations of his human rights by the UK courts.
15. We filed the appeal to the European Courts of Human Rights, on the basis that:
“The United Kingdom failed to provide Spencer with a forum to adjudicate his public law grievances concerning serious human rights violations — due to a jurisdictional error that went unreviewed by its highest court.”
This is not just about the 2016 conviction. It is about:
- Access to a forum of law for human rights abuses (Articles 2, 3, 6, 8, 14, and now 13).
- The UK judiciary’s structural refusal to resolve a case that straddles civil (public law) and criminal law — where neither side took responsibility.
- A procedural vacuum where no domestic court would accept jurisdiction — thus no adjudication was possible.
16. For educational purposes, the Supreme Court refusing permission to appeal by stating there is “no arguable point of law” of general public importance means it considered the application did not meet the high threshold for Supreme Court review. This is common in judicial review matters and final in most cases.
17. In Joseph Maxwell Spencer’s case, the procedural obstacle that the UK courts claimed affected their jurisdiction can be summarised as follows:
The Civil Court (Court of Appeal) and subsequently the Supreme Court refused to consider the merits of Spencer’s case, on the ground that:
“His claim raised matters concerning a criminal cause or matter, over which the Civil Division of the Court of Appeal has no jurisdiction.”
18. Let’s break down this jurisdictional obstacle for academic clarity:
| Issue | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Jurisdiction Split | UK courts operate under a strict separation between civil/public law courts and criminal courts. |
| Spencer’s claim | Raised both: (1) criminal procedural issues (e.g., opinion-based prosecution contrary to the opinion rule at common law), and (2) public law/human rights violations (e.g., torture in prison, poisoning, police failures, institutional discrimination). |
| Civil Court’s position | The Court of Appeal (Civil Division) held that it lacked jurisdiction to consider these issues, categorising them under “criminal cause or matter”. |
| Supreme Court’s refusal | On 27 June 2025, the UKSC denied permission to appeal, stating Spencer’s case did not raise an arguable point of law—but did not adjudicate the public law aspect either. |
| Result | This jurisdictional reasoning created a procedural bar: no forum was available to examine the core of Spencer’s human rights complaints. |
The only question that is sensible to ask is this: Why is the Criminal Aspect of Spencer’s claim Is a Common Law Challenge?
19. Spencer was prosecuted on opinion-evidence (It does not matter whether that opinion-evidence led to a conviction or not). Spencer claim is simply that the opinion rule—that non-expert opinion evidence is inadmissible—is a long-standing principle of the common law. This rule:
- Applies irrespective of the forum (civil or criminal);
- Has been adopted into both criminal and civil procedure (though codified in parts, it originates from common law);
- It functions as a protection against unfair trial and evidentiary abuse.
So when Spencer challenges the use of opinion evidence that took place in his criminal prosecution, he is invoking a common law safeguard. This is especially significant if that opinion evidence was not given by an expert or was relied on in the absence of a victim allegations, raising fundamental questions about evidential fairness and procedural abuse.
Therefore:
- The fact that the opinion evidence was used in a criminal prosecution does not disqualify it from being reviewed under common law principles, and under public law jurisdiction and pesided by Civil Courts.
- Common law jurisdiction does not disappear just because a legal error happened in a criminal context.
- The High Court and Court of Appeal (Civil Division) regularly entertain judicial review claims involving criminal justice authorities, when the claim is grounded in common law or public law—as is the case here.
Spencer’s application is not wrong at all. If the courts misunderstood this distinction, they erred in law. They treated the claim as if only criminal appeal mechanisms could address it, when in fact judicial review grounded in common law was entirely appropriate for the public law dimension of the error.
20. This procedural barrier:
- Prevented people in Spencer’s position from having their public law grievances adjudicated;
- Denied this group of people access to a court for serious allegations (e.g. Article 3 violations);
- Caused a violation of Article 6 ECHR – right of access to a tribunal.
21. We have now asked the ECtHR to intervene because:
- The Civil Appeal Court disclaimed jurisdiction on the grounds that the case involved a criminal cause or matter.
- Whereas, the Criminal Court has no jurisdiction to hear public law claims or human rights violations arising from State inaction or abuse (e.g. police failures to investigate poisoning incident, prison misconduct).
- The Supreme Court’s refusal to adjudicate the jurisdictional dispute left Spencer without any legal forum, violating the principle of effective remedy under Article 6(1).
22. This case is not about asking for a re-try of the 2016 criminal conviction, because the conviction appeal is still pending at court still under the CCRC jurisdiction. Read about it here: LINK.
In the present case, we are simply asking the courts to review whether the UK’s judicial structure and decision-making process denied us a forum to litigate serious public law and human rights claims — despite these being clearly outside the scope of criminal appeal law. The bias or incompleteness of the Supreme Court’s analysis (only engaging with the criminal aspect) shows that our access to a court was illusory.
23. October 9, 2025: The European Union response dated 09 October 2025 confirmed that it will not be hearing the case at this stage. As a result, the full minutes and supporting documents relating to this matter are currently being compiled and will be published soon. However, whilst the full case is being compiled, we will be mindful to omit that part of the case which touches on the CCRC pending case, given that all developments in this matter are interrelated and not isolated incidents.