CRIMINAL PROCEDURE

A challenge, by way of judicial review, by a young offender convicted of the murder and rape of a 14-year-old girl, to an excepting direction which discharged a reporting restriction order imposed under the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 s.45(3), was refused.

A judge had erred in imposing a wasted costs order on a defence barrister after discharging the jury following the barrister’s closing speech. In front of the jury, the barrister had inappropriately criticised the procedure by which questions for young and vulnerable witnesses were formulated in advance, and had also strayed beyond the bounds of appropriate comment in relation to the complainant’s sexual behaviour. However, his comments could have been dealt with in the judge’s summing up and did not call for the discharge of the jury.

There was no general principle that delay, in a criminal trial involving young children, meant that the evidence of that child should always be excluded at a subsequent trial; each case was fact specific. In the instant case, a judge had been entitled to admit a child’s Achieving Best Evidence interview at trial despite the delay of two years and four months since the interview had taken place.

Despite the absence of certain evidence at trial, the appellant’s convictions for sexual assault and rape of his half-sister were safe, because the totality of the trial process including the directions given and the summing up was fair.

As the Attorney General had a statutory responsibility to personally consider whether sentences should be referred to the Court of Appeal as unduly lenient, it was inimical to the public interest for judges, when exercising their discretion as to the provision of a transcript of a sentence hearing, to restrict or limit the provision of such information on such a request from the Attorney General.

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 would be inadmissible], “person” meant the defendant or somebody acting on his behalf, not the deceased person.

A grandfather’s convictions for the sexual abuse of his granddaughter were upheld. There was no proper basis for rejecting the granddaughter’s original complaints, which had been detailed in her ABE interview and maintained throughout the trial, and the reliability of a retraction statement she made shortly after sentencing had to be rejected.

The jury directions given at the trial of a well-known publicist for historical sexual offences had not been inadequate or unfair, and his conviction for indecent assault was safe.

There might be cases where guidance from the trial judge on myths and stereotypes in rape cases would be appropriate to benefit a defendant, but the instant case, in which the defendant was charged with perjury and perverting the course of justice after making repeated and false allegations of rape, was not one of them. Given the evidence called, even if the guidance had been given, it would not have assisted the defendant.