In an indecent assault trial which turned on the comparative credibility of the complainant and the defendant, the judge should have given a full good-character direction in respect of the defendant. His failure to do so, coupled with his direction that the jury should treat the unchallenged evidence of the defendant’s character witnesses with caution, […]
Where the admission of hearsay evidence of a person who had died was sought under the Criminal Justice Act 2003 s.116(2)(a), in the proviso in s.116(5), that if the circumstances (namely that person’s death) were caused “(a) by the person in support of whose case it is sought to give the statement…” [then the evidence […]
An appellant’s conviction for rape was safe where there was substantial evidence before the jury that the victim was intoxicated and incapable of consenting to sexual intercourse with him. There was no presumption that the conviction was unsafe because the judge did not give a good character direction.
A judge had not diluted a good character direction by directing a jury that to the extent that they accepted evidence of misconduct additional to that contained on the indictment, they would want to consider whether that evidence reduced the weight which they gave to the fact that the defendant had no previous convictions.
A conviction for the sexual assault of a teenage friend of the appellant’s daughter was safe where the jury had been careful to convict only on the count for which there was some support from other witnesses and from the content of a text message sent after the incident.
A sentence of twelve months’ imprisonment, suspended for two years, for six counts of gross indecency with a child was unduly lenient where the offender’s lack of contrition had seriously aggravated his offending, and was replaced with two years and three months’ imprisonment, not suspended.
A conviction was quashed where credibility had been the key issue in a sexual offences case and the judge had given an unclear good character direction that was tantamount to a bad character direction.
Deficiencies in a judge’s summing up were such as to render a conviction for historic child sex offences unsafe.
Once a judge had decided that a defendant should be treated as being of good character, the judge was required as a matter of law to give the full good character direction and there was no room for a jury to disagree as to the propriety of using the defendant’s good character in his favour.
Evidence prejudicial to the defence and of no probative value that had inadvertently been disclosed at the appellant’s trial had resulted in unfairness to the appellant and it was doubtful, given the importance of his good character to his defence, that any directions could have overcome that unfairness.
