Driver convicted for causing rail crash fails to win right to appeal

THE driver jailed for causing the deaths of 10 people in the Selby train crash yesterday lost a Court of Appeal bid to challenge his conviction.

Three judges in London refused permission to appeal to builder Gary Hart, 37, who was found guilty of 10 counts of causing death by dangerous driving at Leeds Crown Court and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. Hart was not present in court in London to hear the ruling by Lord Justice Rose, Mr Justice Mitchell and Mr Justice Eady.

Dismissing the application, Lord Justice Rose said: “There is, as it seems to us, no reason whatever to regard these verdicts as unsafe. It seems to us that there was ample material before the jury entitling them to reach the conclusions which they did.”

A jury decided in December, 2001, that Hart had fallen asleep at the wheel of his Land Rover before it plunged off the M62 motorway and on to the main East Coast railway line on February 28 that year, near the North Yorkshire village of Great Heck.

Moments later the Land Rover was hit by a speeding passenger train which then ploughed into a fully-laden coal train.

Six passengers and four rail employees died in the crash. A total of 76 people were treated in hospital.

Hart, from Strubby, Lincolnshire, who had denied the charges and denied falling asleep, was sentenced to five years in January, 2002, after being convicted by a 10-2 majority.

A single judge at the Court of Appeal had already refused to give Hart leave to challenge his conviction, but he renewed his bid yesterday before the three-judge court.

The prosecution case at trial was that Hart fell asleep at the wheel after spending the night before on the phone to a woman he “met” eight days before through the Internet.

The jury heard how Hart’s Land Rover was wrecked by the 117mph impact of the GNER express which then travelled another 500 yards before colliding head-on with a goods service laden with 1,600 tonnes of coal.

The court heard that 10 men, six of whom were passengers, died in what was an “appalling tragedy”, and that there were 94 other casualties.

It was submitted on Hart’s behalf today that there were two “arguable” grounds on which permission to appeal could be granted.

Lord Justice Rose said the first was a challenge to the trial judge’s decision “not to direct the jury as to the availability of the statutory alternative to causing death by dangerous driving, of causing death by careless driving”.

The second was that the jury’s verdicts were unsafe “particularly having regard to the eye-witness evidence of six witnesses ... demonstrating that the applicant was driving in a sensible and appropriate manner” prior to the accident.