JD, Judges could and did give Directions to return a guilty verdict.
In April 2002, Mark Brown was found guilty of being in possession of a article with a blade or point after the Judge directed the Jury to find him guilty.
Brown appealed to the Court of Appeal who upheld the decision stating,
"Here the crucial factor is the absence of evidence from the appellant. In the absence of that evidence it could not be determined by any jury when and where he was intending to use the knife to self-harm. It was, therefore, going to be impossible for the appellant to establish the defence because the evidence did not go sufficiently far. The burden rests on the defence to establish that there is a good reason within section 139(4) and here it patently failed to discharge that. There was simply insufficient evidence to establish the defence to the degree of particularity which was requisite. In our judgment the Recorder was right to withdraw the issue from the jury, although for the subsidiary rather than the principal reason which led him to that conclusion, and in these unusual circumstances ***he was right to direct a conviction."*** [my emphasis]
However, in another case involving a Direction to return a guilty verdict, the matter went to the House of Lords.
It had previously gone to the Court of Appeal who had upheld the verdict and quoted amongst other cases, the Brown case to support their decision.
The House of Lords allowed the appeal stating,
"17. Had the learned judge left the present case to the jury and directed them in the ordinary way, it seems very likely that they would have convicted. There could then have been no effective appeal. As it is, the Court of Appeal's judgment highlights the dangers of judicial intervention. It may well have been "very far from clear" what the appellant's intentions were. The nature and extent of the appellant's religious motivation had been the subject of evidence. The appellant's evidence of not wanting to leave the weapons at home with no one to look after them may well have given rise to nuances (to adopt the language of Lord Keith in Stonehouse) not recognised by the judicial mind. These were pre-eminently matters for evaluation by the jury. Belief that the jury would probably, and rightly, have convicted does not in our judgment entitle us to consider this conviction to be other than unsafe when there were matters which could and should have been the subject of their consideration.
18. We would accordingly allow the appeal, quash the appellant's conviction and answer the certified question by saying that ***there are no circumstances in which a judge is entitled to direct a jury to return a verdict of guilty."***[my emphasis]