CRIMINAL PROCEDURE

Six convictions for making indecent images of children were inconsistent with not guilty verdicts reached on eight similar counts. Although the defendant had viewed the relevant images, that was true in respect of the counts on which he had been acquitted and there was clear evidence that when he saw indecent material, he deleted it.

A conviction for possessing false identity documents was quashed where the offence had erroneously been charged under the Identity Cards Act 2006 s.25(1)(a) instead of the Identity Documents Act 2010 and the Crown conceded that the Criminal Appeal Act 1968 could not be used to substitute an alternative offence.

After receiving a note indicating that a juror in a rape trial might not make a decision but just go with the majority, the judge should have told the jury that each member had to consider the evidence and reach a verdict according to his or her view of the material. The subsequent conviction by a majority was not, however, unsafe as the foreman had made it unequivocally clear that 10 jurors had agreed and two had disagreed.

An offender’s conviction for offences of sexual acitivity with a child was not rendered unsafe by the judge’s failure, after allowing a video recording of the complainant’s evidence-in-chief to be replayed to the jury when they had retired to consider their verdict, to expressly warn the jury against giving the replay video evidence a disproportionate weight.

The court considered the proper approach to the Victims’ Right to Review Guidance of CPS decisions and to claims made in respect of decisions to charge where the original decision was not to charge.

A conviction for sexual assault was safe where a judge had refused to grant an adjournment to allow the defence time to contact a witness mentioned by the victim for the first time in her evidence in chief. Instead the judge had admitted hearsay evidence which indicated that the witness would not have been able to support the victim’s case.

Alleged failures in pre-trial investigation procedure did not affect the safety of the convictions of soldiers found guilty of kidnapping, sexual assault, theft and assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

A magistrates’ court had erred in ordering a chief constable to pay a respondent’s costs after he had withdrawn his application for a sexual offences prevention order. The chief constable had not acted dishonestly or unreasonably in bringing the application and so the appropriate order was no order as to costs. In contradistinction to a normal civil case, in which there was a strong presumption that the discontinuing party would pay the other party’s costs, when a regulatory function was being exercised, a costs order would generally only be made on a withdrawal if the regulator’s conduct justified it, for example, if no order for costs would result in substantial hardship for the other party, or if the regulatory function was exercised in bad faith or unreasonably.

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.