Allen v The Queen

Timothy Francis Allen applied for special leave to appeal to the High Court of Australia against a decision of a Court of Appeal that had dismissed his appeal by applying a proviso. The respondent was the Crown. The dispute concerned the applicant's conviction for murder.

The primary legal issue before the High Court was whether the Court of Appeal had correctly applied the proviso in dismissing Allen's appeal. This, in turn, required the High Court to determine if there had been an irregularity in the trial of such a nature that it went to the root of the proceedings, meaning the applicant did not receive a proper trial. A further question arose as to whether the trial judge's directions to the jury regarding the applicant's evidence were legally sound.

The applicant contended that the trial judge's summing up contained directions that improperly damaged the way the jury considered his evidence. Specifically, the judge's direction that "you always look at the interest that a witness may have in the outcome of proceedings when you are weighing up the reliability of" the evidence was argued to be in breach of the principle established in *Robinson*. The applicant submitted that this direction, by stating "you always" and then directing the jury that the applicant "did" have an interest, effectively told the jury that the applicant's self-serving evidence should be discounted due to his inherent interest in avoiding conviction, thereby preventing a proper consideration of his defence. The applicant argued that given the evidence against him, a conviction for murder was almost inevitable unless the jury could accept his evidence or entertain reasonable doubt, and any direction that led the jury to wrongly approach his evidence went to the root of the trial.