Craigie (aka Creighton), Derek James v The Queen

[2013] NSWCCA 153

Court of Criminal Appeal

Supreme Court

New South Wales

Medium Neutral Citation:	CRAIGIE (aka CREIGHTON), Derek James v R [2013] NSWCCA 153
Hearing dates:	Friday 7 June 2013
Decision date:	03 July 2013
Before:	Hoeben CJ at CL at [1] Hidden J at [2] Fullerton J at [37]
Decision:	Appeal dismissed
Catchwords:	CRIMINAL LAW - appeal against conviction - charges of sexual assault - a number of potential witnesses not called in the Crown case - fresh material served on defence during course of the trial - suggested misconduct by juror - whether miscarriage of justice
Legislation Cited:	Evidence Act 1995 Jury Act 1977
Cases Cited:	- Longman v The Queen (1989) 168 CLR 79 - R v Skaf [2004] NSWCCA 37, 60 NSWLR 86
Category:	Principal judgment
Parties:	Derek James Craigie (appellant) Regina (Crown)
Representation:	Counsel: N Carroll (appellant) N Adams SC (Crown) Solicitors: George Sten & Co (appellant) S Kavanagh - Solicitor for Public Prosecutions (Crown)
File Number(s):	2010/233760
Decision under appeal	Jurisdiction: 9101 Date of Decision: 2012-04-20 00:00:00 Before: Toner DCJ File Number(s): 2010/233760

Judgment

1. HOEBEN CJ at CL: I agree with Hidden J.

1. HIDDEN J: The appellant, Derek James Craigie, was found guilty at trial in the District Court of four counts of sexual assault, and was sentenced to a term of imprisonment. He appeals against conviction only.

1. Given the nature of the grounds of appeal, it is unnecessary to recite the facts. It is sufficient to say that the complainant of the offences was the appellant's cousin. His name is not Craigie. He was aged between 15 and 16 years at the time. The offences occurred in 1998 and 1999. The appellant and the complainant were members of a large extended Aboriginal family, which at the relevant time was living in the Newcastle area, having moved there from Moree. Another cousin of the appellant, Owen Craigie, was playing football for the Newcastle Knights team. The family home was at North Lambton, but Owen Craigie was living in a unit at Adamstown. Sometimes the appellant stayed with a family friend, Eddie Strachan, who lived in a townhouse also at Adamstown.

1. The complainant's evidence was that the first offence occurred at Mr Strachan's home in about May 1998. Other family members were at the home on the occasion but at the time the offence occurred they had left to buy some alcohol.

1. The second and third offences occurred on another occasion, sometime in the winter of 1998, at Owen Craigie's unit, where the complainant was staying overnight. Again, various members of the family, together with Eddie Strachan and two other men, Sean Swan and Nigel Welsh, had been at the unit, but had left with Owen Craigie to go out for drinks. The offences occurred in their absence, and after them the complainant locked himself in Owen Craigie's room. It was sometime later that Owen Craigie returned to the unit.

1. The fourth offence occurred in February 1999 at the family home at North Lambton. Yet again, other members of the family were at the home. The complainant excused himself from the gathering and went to sleep in a granny flat in the backyard. He was woken by the appellant, and it was there that the offence was committed.

1. The complainant told no-one about any of this until 2007, and in November of that year he made a statement to the police. The appellant was not arrested until 1 July 2010, and the trial took place between late February and early March 2012.

1. There are two grounds of appeal:

(1) The unsatisfactory police investigation and the continuous service of critical fresh evidence, after the trial had commenced, has resulted in a substantial miscarriage of justice.

(2) The trial miscarried by reason of the misconduct of a juror, locating a relevant witness during the trial.

Neither the prosecutor (a trial advocate) nor defence counsel at the trial appeared in this court.

1. Investigation and conduct of the trial

1. Counsel for the appellant, Ms Carroll, pointed out that almost 3 years elapsed between the complaint to police and the arrest of the appellant, a delay which she said was not adequately explained. The officer in charge of the investigation, Sergeant Magann, gave evidence of problems in the course of the investigation, including difficulties in contacting some potential Crown witnesses and the refusal of others to assist police. In the result, statements had not been obtained from Eddie Strachan, Sean Swan, Nigel Welsh and six members of the extended family, including Owen Craigie.

1. It is not for this court to assess the efficiency and adequacy of a police investigation, except in so far as it might bear upon whether a miscarriage of justice occurred. It is not apparent that the delay, of itself, caused a miscarriage of justice in the present case. Nor, in the event, did Ms Carroll articulate one. As was pointed out by the Crown Advocate, Ms Adams SC, who appeared with Ms Davidson for the Crown, substantial delay between the events complained of and the trial is common enough in cases of this kind. The trial judge gave a thorough direction to the jury about the forensic disadvantage to the appellant from the delay, in accordance with Longman v The Queen (1989) 168 CLR 79. No complaint was, or could have been, made about that direction.

1. However, the matter does not end there. There appears to have been a flurry of investigative activity at or about the time of the trial, leading to the service on the appellant's legal representatives of new material in the course of the trial.

1. A number of additional statements, including two statements by the complainant, were served on the defence shortly before the trial commenced and while it was running. Defence counsel appeared to be able to cope with this, assisted on one occasion by an examination of the complainant in a Basha enquiry. At no stage did he seek the discharge of the jury. It is unnecessary to go to the detail of these statements. It is sufficient to refer to the issues to which they relate.

1. The first of those was evidence of complaint. Prior to the trial the only evidence on that question was that the complainant had told his sister what had happened to him. This was in the context of the sister's allegation that the appellant had sexually assaulted her and another sister. However, in an additional statement made on the first day of the trial the complainant said that he had complained to his uncle towards the end of July 2007. This followed a suicide attempt by him (a matter which he had revealed in his initial statement to the police, without reference to any complaint to his uncle). The uncle had since died. In this additional statement he also said that he complained to his father in early August 2007. This was the subject of the Basha enquiry.

1. The trial judge rejected evidence of the complaint to the sister and of the suicide. (I should add that the appellant was later acquitted in the Local Court of the charges relating to his sisters.) However, on the second day of the trial the complainant did give evidence before the jury of the complaint to his uncle and to his father.

1. The father had made a statement to the police before the trial, in which he said nothing about the complainant having made any complaint to him. However, on the third day of the trial the father made an additional statement in which he did recount such a complaint. In that statement the father said that around the middle of 2007 he was told by the uncle about the complainant's attempt at suicide. Some time later his daughter told him that the appellant had molested her and her sister, and also the complainant. Some time later again, he and Owen Craigie took the complainant for a drive to a lookout, where he confronted the complainant about the matter and demanded to be told the truth. The complainant then said that the appellant had raped him. He explained that he had been reluctant to tell his father about it because the appellant was the father's favourite nephew and he did not think that anyone would believe him. His father offered him his full support, and it was shortly thereafter that the matter was brought to the attention of police.

1. The complainant's evidence of his complaint to his father was to much the same effect but, as I have said, he placed it in early August 2007 and, according to him, it was made in the course of a telephone conversation with his father.

1. On the fourth day of the trial, when the complainant had completed his evidence in chief but was yet to be cross-examined, the trial advocate and defence counsel agreed that the father would not be called to give evidence but the jury would be presented with a document setting out agreed facts, pursuant to s 191 of the Evidence Act 1995, concerning his two statements. That document was admitted later that day. It said:

"1 The complainant's father ... made two statements to the police in relation to this matter on 21 December 2007 and 29 February 2012.

2 In neither of those statements did [the father] say that he had ever spoken to his son ... on the telephone in around August 2007.

3 In neither of those statements did [the father] say his son ... had ever told him in around August 2007 that he had been 'raped by [the appellant]'."

1. In the event, then, the evidence of complaint to the appellant's sister was rejected. The evidence of complaint to the uncle was admitted, stripped of its context following a suicide attempt. As to that evidence, his Honour cautioned the jury that it may be unreliable because the uncle was not available to give evidence. The complainant's evidence of complaint to his father was admitted, but the jury were told that his father's statements did not support that evidence. While it is true that this evidence had to be dealt with in the first days of the trial, it emerged more favourably to the appellant than it might have done. It does not appear to me that this course of events gave rise to a miscarriage of justice.

1. One further matter should be mentioned. Also on the fourth day of the trial, the complainant made yet another statement. In that statement he did describe the complaint to his father having occurred at the lookout. He said that both his father and Owen asked if he was "gay" or "straight", adding that it would be "perfectly alright" if he was gay. He said that he was straight. In written submissions Ms Carroll also complained that this evidence was not led, arguing that the suggestion that he was gay might have given the complainant a motive to fabricate his evidence against the appellant.

1. This submission appears to have been founded upon the mistaken belief that the conversation about whether the appellant was gay emerged from the father's statement. It did not; it appeared only in the additional statement of the complainant. It was material available to defence counsel, about which he could have cross-examined the complainant if he wished. Whether cross-examination about that matter might have been a sound tactical decision is debateable. Counsel's choice not to do so could hardly be criticised.

1. The other matter about which additional evidence was served after the trial commenced related to the complainant's schooling in 1998 and 1999, the years during which the offences were said to have been committed. The material disclosed his enrolment at the school in 1998 and term dates and school vacations in 1998 and 1999. This material was used to help establish the dates of the offences, a matter of significance because the first three counts alleged sexual assault in a circumstance of aggravation, being that the complainant was under 16 years of age at the time.

1. Again, defence counsel dealt with this material and did not seek a discharge of the jury because of it. The primary argument which Ms Carroll mounted in written submissions relating to this evidence was not pressed at the hearing of the appeal.

1. Certainly, the amount of evidence that was served upon the defence at the eleventh hour was unusual, causing his Honour at one stage to criticise the adequacy of the investigation. In written submissions Ms Carroll argued that a miscarriage of justice arose "out of defence counsel's inability to adequately reflect upon and properly consider the new evidence and its implications to the nature of the case as it was unfolding - let alone any chance to further investigate or question" the material served. However, defence counsel apparently did not see it that way and, apart from that broad assertion, Ms Carroll was unable to articulate any specific basis upon which a miscarriage might be found.

1. Finally, as to the potential witnesses who were not called, Ms Carroll noted the length of time between the trial and the events alleged and the need for as much evidence as possible of the surrounding circumstances. In addition, the appellant had suffered a significant brain injury in a car accident in 2001, and had no memory of the relevant events in 1998 and 1999. He did not give evidence at the trial.

1. However, apart from the complainant's father, it is not known what any of those witnesses might have said. In the event, the only witnesses in the Crown case were the complainant and Sergeant Magann. Yet again, this was not the subject of complaint by trial counsel and one could imagine that he might have been content that the trial was conducted in that way. The complainant's evidence stood alone and, as the Chief Judge suggested in argument, defence counsel may have taken the view that "less is more." His Honour gave the jury directions about the absence of these potential witnesses, and about the appellant's memory difficulties, which were favourable to the appellant.

1. Accordingly, I am not persuaded that the matters raised under this ground, individually or collectively, establish a miscarriage of justice. This ground is not made out.

2. The juror

1. It was on the fourth day of the trial that Sergeant Magann gave evidence. In the course of explaining his difficulties in obtaining statements from potential witnesses, he said that he had been informed that Owen Craigie was in China on business. As the jury were leaving the court at the end of that day's hearing, a juror had a conversation with one of the sheriff's officers about the whereabouts of Owen Craigie. The officer reported what occurred in a note to the trial judge, as follows:

"A male juror said that I know the location of Owen Craigie. He is at Wallsend Oval now playing football."

The note went on to record that the officer told the juror that he should not discuss any aspect of the trial with sheriff's officers.

1. His Honour discussed the matter with the trial advocate and defence counsel the following morning. The sheriff's officer told the court that other jurors were in the immediate vicinity when the juror spoke to him. By agreement, his Honour gave a direction to the jury to the effect that the only evidence before them was that Owen Craigie was in China, and that the statement by the juror to the contrary should be ignored. He emphasised that the case was to be decided on the evidence heard in court, the addresses of counsel and his directions of law.

1. Ms Carroll submitted that these directions were insufficient to guard against a miscarriage of justice. She argued that his Honour should have enquired how the juror knew of the location of Owen Craigie, adding that this court could not be satisfied that the juror had not made enquiries of his own and may even have himself spoken to Owen Craigie about the matter. This, she said, would have amounted to juror misconduct akin to that identified in R v Skaf [2004] NSWCCA 37, 60 NSWLR 86.

1. In Skaf two jurors had privately inspected the area where the offences were said to have occurred, there being an issue whether the complainant could have identified the accused in the lighting available at the scene. The appellant had been convicted, but the Court of Criminal Appeal ordered a new trial because it could not be satisfied that there had not been a material irregularity affecting the verdict. However, the court accepted a Crown submission that "the simple fact that the jurors went to the park for a private view, whilst clearly wrongful, did not of itself amount to a material irregularity." Their Honours added that the "issue of materiality depends of what was actually seen and done at the park": [267] (p 102). Clearly, the present case is very different from Skaf.

1. This trial was held at Newcastle. It is highly likely that members of the jury knew of Owen Craigie because he played for the Newcastle Knights. At the outset of the trial, in the course of addressing the jury panel in accordance with s 38(7)(a) of the Jury Act 1977, the trial advocate said that Mr Craigie might be mentioned in the evidence, and that he was "a professional footballer that played for the Newcastle Knights around the time that the facts are concerned with in this case ... ." After the jury was empanelled, in the course of conventional opening directions, his Honour told the jury that they must not make any enquiries outside the courtroom about any matter relating to any of the issues in the trial, and that they should not discuss the case with anybody except their fellow jurors and only when they were all together in the jury room.

1. His Honour was not asked to examine the juror to determine the source of his knowledge of Owen Craigie's whereabouts. In discussion with counsel, he observed that it was probably information the juror had "anyway." Defence counsel responded that that was perhaps the case but that, in any event, he did not want to "set off a chain of enquiry by that particular juror or anything ... ."

1. The appellant's legal representatives in the appeal did not seek to set in train an investigation into the matter by the sheriff under s 73A of the Jury Act. However, at the hearing Ms Carroll submitted that that was an option this court could consider. Upon reflection, I do not believe that an investigation is necessary.

1. It might have been preferable for his Honour to have examined the juror. Nevertheless, the likely explanation for the juror's observation is that he was aware that Owen Craigie was playing football at that particular oval because of Mr Craigie's prominence as a footballer in the area. Certainly, in the time between Sergeant Magann's evidence that he believed Mr Craigie to be in China and the juror's disclosure to the sheriff's officer, the juror would have had no opportunity to make his own enquiries about Mr Craigie's whereabouts.

1. If the juror had personal contact with Mr Craigie before the trial, one would have expected him to come forward when the prosecutor addressed the panel under s 37(7)(a); and if he had had any discussion with Mr Craigie about the trial while it was in progress, he would have been in breach of his Honour's clear directions after the jury was empanelled. The possibility that there was an irregularity through the juror's contact with Mr Craigie is no more than speculative. Here again, I am not persuaded that this incident gave rise to a miscarriage of justice. This ground also is not made out.

1. I would dismiss the appeal.

1. FULLERTON J: I agree with Hidden J.

**********

Decision last updated: 03 July 2013