Anthony Kalinga’s conviction for possessing an offensive weapon has been overturned by the Court of Appeal, which ruled that using a crutch to strike someone within one or two seconds of taking it up does not amount to a separate offence under the Prevention of Crime Act 1953.
The case, decided on 1 September 2026 in Anthony Kalinga v R [2026] EWCA Crim 1135, involved a physical confrontation in Bournemouth in the early hours of 25 April 2025. CCTV footage captured the incident between Kalinga and an acquaintance, Ebima Cessay. Cessay had a leg injury and was carrying two crutches. During a lull, Kalinga handed Cessay one of the two crutches Cessay was carrying because of a leg injury. Moments later, after further exchanges, Cessay struck Kalinga with a crutch. A bystander then handed Kalinga the second crutch, and he struck Cessay back within one to two seconds of receiving it.
The injuries were significant, including a cut to the forehead and a broken nose. Kalinga was originally convicted at Bournemouth Crown Court of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and having an offensive weapon in a public place. He received a total sentence of 14 months, with the weapons charge attracting one month to run concurrently. He appealed only the weapons conviction, arguing that the trial judge should have accepted his submission that there was no case to answer.
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Sir Gary Hickinbottom, giving the leading judgment, traced the legal history of the 1953 Act. The courts had previously struggled with the line of authority regarding whether the instant use of an object as a weapon could itself establish the intent required for a separate possession offence. The Court confirmed that the settled position, established in Ohlson v Hylton [1975] and followed in R v Humphreys, is that no offence is committed where a person arms themselves with an object for instant use against a victim.
This legal framework suggests that the provision is aimed at the carrying of weapons with intent formed before any occasion for violence arises, rather than at the use of an object seized during an assault. When the taking up of an article and its use cannot properly be separated from the assault itself, no separate weapons offence arises.
The prosecution had not appeared at the original trial. However, before the Court of Appeal, counsel for the Crown accepted that the trial judge had misapplied the law. The Court agreed, describing the CCTV evidence as striking. It found that Kalinga’s possession of the crutch and his use of it could not be treated as distinct from the assault itself. The Court further observed that the weapons count should not have been added to the indictment at all, since it added nothing beyond the assault charge and risked confusing the jury. This echoes earlier authority, including Bates v Bulman [1979], which suggests that a second charge under the 1953 Act often obscures rather than assists the resolution of cases already covered by a substantive assault offence.
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It is worth considering how this ruling might affect future prosecutions involving improvised weapons during street fights. If the prosecution cannot prove that a defendant carried the object with intent before the violence started, and the weapon was used essentially as an extension of the immediate attack, the separate possession charge may fail. The focus in these scenarios will likely remain on the immediacy of the act and the lack of premeditation in seizing the object.
With the conviction on the weapons count quashed and no retrial sought, the overall sentence remains unchanged. The Crown had already reflected Kalinga’s use of the crutch in the sentence imposed for the assault.
