Fresh evidence which cast doubt on the credibility of a complainant’s evidence had sufficient impact on the safety of a conviction for rape for it to be quashed. However, the evidence did not have the same impact on the complainant’s credibility in respect of allegations of sexual assault, which were upheld.
A judge had erred in refusing to allow cross-examination of a rape complainant regarding her previous convictions, as the evidence was of substantial probative value in respect of the question of whether her allegation was worthy of belief. However, the evidence would have had no significant impact on the jury’s consideration of the specific issues […]
In the circumstances, the fact that a complainant had made an unfounded allegation of rape against an accused in a retrial did not cast doubt on the reliability of her evidence against him in an earlier trial so as to render unsafe his conviction for sexual assault in that earlier trial.
In a case in which the defendant failed to mention in interview a matter on which he later relied in his defence, but that matter was one which the jury might find to be a lie in any event, the judge was right to give a direction which combined elements of a Lucas direction and […]
The Appeal Division of the Isle of Man had been entitled to conclude that an autistic man’s conviction for sexual assault was safe. The expert evidence adduced by the offender about his condition did not lead to a different conclusion because the evidence, as a whole, supported conviction.
A trial judge had a wide discretion as to what warning, if any, he gave to a jury in relation to a witness’s alleged unreliability. In the instant case, the judge had given an adequate and appropriate warning to the jury with regard to the inconsistencies in the complainant’s evidence and an admitted lie, and […]
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.
Although a judge in a rape trial had not specifically directed the jury that evidence given by witnesses of what the complainant had told them after the incident was not independent evidence of the acts complained of, there had, in the circumstances, been no real risk of the jury assuming that it was.
It was appropriate to quash a conviction for attempted buggery and indecent assault where new evidence that cast doubt on the veracity of the victim’s evidence, that had not been presented at the offender’s trial, threw the safety of his conviction for indecent assault and attempted buggery into doubt.
Where the cross-examination of a complainant under the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 s.41(1) to show that her allegations of sexual abuse against an individual were false, and therefore that her allegations against the defendant were likely to be false, meant that the jury would have been told about the individual’s limited admissions […]
