The Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland overturned an appellant’s convictions on three out of eleven counts of historic sexual abuse on the basis that they were unsafe. It found the remainder to be safe, rejecting arguments that the judge had erred in permitting evidence of reprehensible behaviour and that a fair trial had been […]
A district judge had not erred when refusing to make an anonymity order in respect of a defendant charged with making indecent images of children as, despite the defendant having been targeted and attacked in relation to a previous allegation of indecent assault of a child, he had not demonstrated that there was a real […]
There was no support for the proposition that the Criminal Justice (Evidence) (Northern Ireland) Order 2004 had changed the law by prohibiting bad character evidence on its own from constituting, in appropriate circumstances, evidence of identity.
There was no support for the proposition that the Criminal Justice (Evidence) (Northern Ireland) Order 2004 had changed the law by prohibiting bad character evidence on its own from constituting, in appropriate circumstances, evidence of identity.
A judge had correctly directed a jury on the issue of doli incapax that they could look at the circumstances surrounding historic sex offences to assist them in their assessment of whether a 13-year-old boy had been aware that his acts were seriously wrong.
A jury had not acted inconsistently in finding two young offenders guilty of oral rape but not guilty of sexual assault, even though the charges represented a sequence of events over the course of a 30-minute period and the central issue was consent. On the evidence, there was no logical inconsistency in the verdicts.
