ED v The Queen
[2019] ACTCA 10
•17 May 2019
SUPREME COURT OF THE AUSTRALIAN CAPITAL TERRITORY
COURT OF APPEAL
Case Title: | ED v The Queen |
Citation: | [2019] ACTCA 10 |
Hearing Date: | 9 May 2019 |
DecisionDate: | 17 May 2019 |
Before: | Murrell CJ, Mossop and Bromwich JJ |
Decision: | The appeal is dismissed. The verdicts on Counts 1, 4, 6 and 7 are confirmed. |
Catchwords: | APPEAL – CRIMINAL LAW – Appeal against conviction – whether jury verdict is unreasonable – where offender is found guilty on some counts and not guilty on others – different verdicts based on same evidence not inherently unreasonable – Court to have regard to evidence before jury in assessing doubt – where there is a logical explanation for the acquittals |
Cases Cited: | BI v The Queen (No 2) [2018] ACTCA 11 Dickson v R [2017] NSWCCA 78; 94 NSWLR 476 Walker v R [2019] NSWCCA 4 |
Parties: | ED (Appellant) The Queen (Respondent) |
Representation: | Counsel K Archer (Appellant) P Dixon (Respondent) |
| Solicitors Legal Aid ACT (Appellant) ACT Director of Public Prosecutions (Respondent) | |
File Number: | ACTCA 38 of 2018 |
Decision under appeal: | Court/Tribunal: Supreme Court of the ACT Before: Burns J Date of Decision: 30 November 2018 Case Title: R v ED Citation: [2018] ACTSC 366 |
THE COURT:
The Appeal
The appellant appealed against four jury verdicts of guilty on the ground that they were unreasonable or cannot be supported having regard to the evidence because of their inconsistency with three verdicts of not guilty that were returned by the same jury in relation to the same incident.
Between 4 and 9 July 2016, the appellant, who was then 18 years old, stayed in Canberra with J (his aunt) and her children (his cousins), including N, who was then 13 years old.
At the trial, the prosecution alleged that, during one incident on a night when the appellant was staying with J and her family, he committed seven acts of sexual misconduct towards N, a person then under the age of 16 years. The alleged acts were four acts of sexual intercourse (two acts of digital intercourse and two acts of anal intercourse), one act of attempted sexual intercourse (attempted penile-vaginal intercourse), and two acts of indecency (tongue kissing and touching the buttocks/breasts).
The jury found that the appellant was guilty of Counts 1, 4, 6 and 7 (the first sexual intercourse by digital penetration, attempted penile-vaginal intercourse, and both acts of indecency), but not guilty of Counts 2, 3 and 5 (a second digital penetration, anal penetration, and a resumption of anal penetration).
Evidence at Trial
N first met the appellant in the 2012-2013 Christmas holidays.
On one occasion before July 2016, the appellant stayed with N’s family in Canberra, but nothing untoward occurred on that occasion.
N said that there had been a prior similar incident when she was staying with the appellant’s family in Sydney. On that occasion, the appellant and N were in the same bed. N woke up to find the appellant very close to her and staring at her. He kissed her and she moved back. Then he grabbed her and held her so that she could not move. He put his hand down her pants, felt her genital area, and put two fingers inside her vagina. The incident lasted five to 10 minutes and ended when N said that she needed to go to the bathroom. N disclosed this incident of inappropriate “touching” to her best friend, T, in March or May 2016.
The prosecution relied on the Sydney incident to support alleged tendencies on the part of the appellant to have a sexual interest in N, and to act upon his sexual interest by engaging in sexual activity with her.
N’s mother, J, gave evidence that when the appellant stayed at her house during the July 2016 school holidays, he often went to sleep on a mattress at the foot of N’s bed.
J gave evidence that at about 9:30pm one evening she found the appellant and N under a doona on N’s bed. She remonstrated with them and told the appellant to get out of the bed. In evidence, she said that she left the room but later returned to find them still in the bed. In her police statement, she had said that the appellant left the room when asked to do so.
Through the medium of the evidence in chief interview on 22 July 2016, at the trial N gave evidence of the subject incident, which she said had taken place in her bedroom in the first week of the July 2016 school holidays (5 to 9 July 2016). She said that the incident had occurred between 10pm and 3am while the DVD “Kill Bill” was playing.
In that interview, N’s first description of the incident was as follows:
my cousin tried to have sex with me and I didn’t want to. He – oh, that was the start I – to be honest, I didn’t care, but when I realised it was disgusting and it was wrong, I told him to stop and get off me. And I said no … he kept trying to put his penis inside of me. And I tried to get him off and he just kept, like, trying to make me shush and saying it was okay and stuff like that. And then he started to, um, finger me. And I told him to stop it and I tried to take his hands away. And I told him … multiple times to get off me … it lasted with me telling him to get off me for quite some time. Probably half an hour … And that was it.
(Emphasis added.)
When asked to describe as much as she could, N said:
… he started to … kiss me and, um, make out with me. Then he put his hand down my pants and started to put his fingers up my vagina. And then I started to say no … And I tried to push him off me. Then he pulled my pants down and he told me to turn around, but I refused to, so he put – like, forced me to turn over. And then he, um, put his penis in my bum and it hurt a lot … I tried to get it out of me. Then he pulled it out and tried to put it in my vagina, but I kept trying to get his penis away from me. And he kept going, trying to get into my vagina, um, put his penis in front of me then, um, he kept – then after, trying to put it in, arm, again. And ended up I was really in pain … every so often he would pull it out, and then put his fingers inside of me and grope my bum and my breasts. And then I got really angry with him, arm, side pushed him off my bed …
(Emphasis added.)
As to the initial kissing, N said that when she was facing away from him, the appellant turned and held her head, and had his arm around her face. He started to kiss her lips and to put his tongue in her mouth. She tried to get away by moving her head. The tongue kissing made her feel sick (Count 6, act of indecency).
N gave evidence that, while kissing her, the appellant put his hand down her pants and tried to put his fingers inside her vagina. She told him to stop, tried to push him off, and grabbed his left hand (Count 1, sexual intercourse).
However, the appellant got hold of her and “put his hand back in” (Count 2, sexual intercourse).
N gave evidence that the “kissing and fingering [in her vagina]” was “mostly at the start”.
N said that after the digital penetration, the appellant pulled her pants down and forced her to turn over onto her side while he lay behind her. He pulled her pyjama pants down and “grabbed his penis and tried to put it in my bottom”. When asked by the interviewing police officer to clarify whether the penis had gone “all the way inside [her] bum or just between [her] bum cheeks”, N said that it was “all inside of me, because it was really, really sore”. Her anal area felt like it was “ripping, but not ripping” and she felt sick, disgusted and objectified. In cross-examination, N said, “I do not recall saying how far it went [in]” and “I just remember the pain of it and it felt excruciating” (Count 3, sexual intercourse).
N gave evidence that, on three occasions, she pushed the appellant off so his penis was no longer inside her, but he resumed his activities and “kept doing that in and out [of my bum]” (Count 5, sexual intercourse).
On the third occasion when she pushed the appellant away, he desisted.
N said that, between the second and third occasions when she pushed him away from her anal area, the appellant “tried to put it in my vagina” (Count 4, attempted sexual intercourse). He failed to do so because she resisted by holding her legs tightly together, but “he was trying to”.
N said that the appellant had “groped” her breasts and bum “every so often”. She also said that the “groping” occurred “the last time he was trying to get his penis into my vagina” (Count 7, act of indecency).
N conceded that, because she was facing away, at no time did she see the appellant’s penis. However, she said that, in the course of pushing the appellant away, when he was “taking [his penis] out of [her]” she felt his penis, “it was hard” and he had hair. She knew that his penis was inside her anus “because it was really really sore”. In the days following the incident, she did not report any pain in her rectum and the pain ceased after a while.
N said that the incident lasted about half an hour. She was very concerned about the appellant achieving penile-vaginal intercourse because she “knew that unprotected sex in my vagina, like, causes pregnancy”. However, she “[didn’t] know much” about how pregnancy occurred. Between the incident and 22 July 2016, she experienced “shooting pain” and became concerned that she was pregnant. In cross-examination, N agreed that, despite concern that she expressed in July 2016 about pregnancy, based on the activities that had occurred she could not have been pregnant.
J gave evidence that on the day after she observed the appellant in N’s bed the appellant told J that N had “ditched” him. J noticed that N was distant towards the appellant. That night N went to stay with her stepfather.
About a week after the incident, N told her best friend, T, that her cousin had “touched her” and had “sexually assaulted” her in her bedroom and that she was concerned about pregnancy, but “she didn’t explain what happened”.
J gave evidence that, at some stage after the bed incident, N said that she did not want to stay with the appellant’s family in Sydney. About two weeks after J had observed the appellant and N in bed together, N complained of severe abdominal/lower pelvic cramps and stayed home from school. J decided to take N to hospital. When J told N that she may be given a pregnancy test and asked whether she had been having sex, N responded ambivalently, but to the effect that she had done so. When asked with whom, N became upset and anxious and apologised repeatedly. Ultimately, N said that she had “had sex” with the appellant. J drove N and T to the hospital.
When Dr Puppala examined N at the hospital on the evening of 21 July 2016, N disclosed that three or four weeks earlier she had been sexually assaulted by an 18‑year‑old male and said that she worried that she might be pregnant. N complained of lower abdominal pain and nausea. She did not refer to anal penetration. A pregnancy test returned a negative result. N was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection and prescribed antibiotics.
J said that the following morning when she questioned N further about the incident N “blatantly said she didn’t want to do it [have sex]”. J contacted the police.
On 22 July 2016, police attended N’s house. N told Constable McMullen that she had been “sexually assaulted” by her cousin, in her bed during the school holidays. N said “he just kept on trying to have sex with me” and “he was trying to get it in my vagina I think, but he went up my bum. He really hurt”. N also said that she had become scared about the possibility of pregnancy.
Later that day, police conducted the first evidence in chief interview with N (referred to above).
Police assumed N’s online Instagram identity. In conversations on Instagram, the appellant said that he was “truly sorry but I promise to never hurt you again … In whatever way”. When “N” said that she was intending to have a pregnancy test and that she was scared, the appellant expressed no surprise, replying “I’m here for you”.
On 12 April 2018, N was cross-examined during a pre-trial hearing. Much of the cross‑examination focused on the implausibility of the allegations concerning anal penetration: N described excruciating pain but had not called out for help; it was said that penetration could not have occurred having regard to the body positions of the appellant and N; and N did not recall that any lubrication had been used, nor had she noticed any resulting bleeding.
Defence Closing Submissions
Unsurprisingly, at the conclusion of the trial, the closing submissions of defence counsel attacked the complainant’s credibility.
As to the specifics of the offences themselves, defence counsel submitted that N’s description of anal penetration and attempted vaginal penetration was implausible given the relative positions of the appellant and N’s body at the time when the intercourse was said to have occurred. Counsel relied upon the fact that N had not sought help despite experiencing what she described as “excruciating pain”.
Otherwise, defence counsel’s submissions about N’s credibility addressed more general matters, such as N’s inability to be precise about when the incident had occurred and the fact that, after the incident, N continued to communicate with the appellant via social media. As to N’s assertion that she had feared pregnancy, counsel submitted that N would have understood that the appellant’s conduct (as N described it) could not have resulted in pregnancy.
Trial Judge’s Directions
In his opening remarks to the jury, the trial judge directed the jury as to the onus and standard of proof.
At the close of the trial, in relation to onus and standard of proof, the trial judge said:
As I told you at the outset of the trial, there are two very important principles that you must keep at the forefront of your mind when you come to consider your verdicts. The first is that it is fundamental to our system of criminal justice that an accused person is presumed to be innocent until such time as the prosecution proves him to be guilty. The second principle is that it is for the Crown to prove the guilt of the accused with respect to each of the charges to the standard of beyond reasonable doubt, and this requires the Crown to prove each of the elements of the charge to the standard of beyond reasonable doubt.
In relation to the acceptance of witness evidence and the drawing of inferences, the trial judge directed the jury:
In considering your verdicts, it is for you to decide what evidence you accept as being truthful and reliable or what evidence you may reject as being untruthful or unreliable. Now, you'll note that I draw a distinction between truthful evidence and reliable evidence. You will readily understand that sometimes a witness may say something that he or she believes to be the truth, but closer examination of the evidence or other evidence in the trial may lead you to conclude that the evidence is unreliable. It is for you to decide what weight you may give to any particular piece of evidence or what inferences you may be prepared to draw from evidence.
…
In a criminal trial where you have to be satisfied of the guilt of the accused to the standard of beyond reasonable doubt, you should be very careful about drawing inferences. You should examine any possible inference to ensure that it's justifiable.
…
It is for you to assess the various witnesses that you've seen and heard and to decide whether they are telling the truth and whether their evidence is reliable. You have seen each of the witnesses as they gave their evidence. It's a matter for you entirely what evidence you accept and what evidence you reject. This decision about what evidence you accept and what evidence you reject may be based on all manner of things such as …
Importantly, in relation to N’s evidence and the need to consider each charge separately, the trial judge directed the jury:
You will no doubt understand that [N] is the single vital witness in the prosecution case. She is the only witness able to give evidence – direct evidence – about the events which she says occurred on this evening. As such, her evidence is vital to the prosecution case. Whenever the Crown seeks to establish the guilt of an accused person with a case based largely or exclusively on a single witness, it is important that the jury are told that they should exercise caution, and that is what I'm going to tell you now.
You must exercise caution before you convict the accused because the Crown case largely depends on you accepting the reliability of the evidence of a single witness. This being so, unless you are satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the complainant is both an honest and accurate witness in the account that she has given, you cannot find the accused guilty. Before you can convict the accused you should examine the evidence of the complainant very carefully in order to satisfy yourself that you can safely act upon that evidence to the high standard required in a criminal trial.
That caution is not based on any personal view that I have of the complainant or her evidence. I told you at the outset of this summing up that I would not express any personal opinion on the evidence, but in any criminal trial where the Crown case relies solely or substantially upon the evidence of a single witness, a jury must always approach that evidence with particular caution because of the onus and standard of proof placed upon the Crown.
I am not suggesting to you that you are not entitled to convict the accused upon the evidence of the complainant. Clearly, you are entitled to do so, but only after you have carefully examined the evidence and satisfied yourself that it is reliable beyond reasonable doubt. In considering the complainant's evidence and whether it does satisfy you of the accused's guilt, you should of course look to see if it is supported or not supported by other evidence.
Now, there's something further that I need to say to you about your approach to the evidence given by the complainant. You're no doubt aware that in this trial the accused is facing seven charges. You have to examine each charge separately so that you must look at the evidence relevant to each charge and decide each charge based upon that evidence only. You cannot, for example, if you were - and I am not saying whether you would or not - if you were to find the accused guilty of one of the charges, you could not use the fact that you found him guilty of that charge in deciding whether he was guilty of another charge, so that you have to look at each charge separately.
But there's one exception to that. Any doubt that you may form about the credibility or reliability of the evidence of the complainant with regard to one or more of the counts must be taken into account in assessing the truthfulness or reliability of the complainant evidence generally. You will no doubt recall that the Crown called a number of witnesses to testify to what the complainant said to them about these events. As those people were not direct witnesses to the relevant events, you may have wondered why they were called to give evidence.
The trial judge correctly directed the jury that, if accepted, the complaint evidence could be used both as informing the complainant’s credit and as some evidence of the facts asserted.
Appellant’s Submission
The appellant submitted that the acts of anal intercourse were central to N’s “narrative of the short event” and that, if the jury had entertained a doubt about her reliability on Counts 3 and 5, then logically the jury must have entertained a doubt about her evidence supporting the other counts.
Applicable Principles
The applicable legal principles in relation to unreasonable verdicts are well-established. Recently, they were applied by this Court in BI v The Queen (No 2) [2018] ACTCA 11 (BI). They can be summarised as follows:
(a)The jury is “the constitutional tribunal for deciding issues of fact” and it is a serious step to set aside a jury verdict on the ground that it is “unreasonable”: Hocking v Bell (1945) 71 CLR 430 at 438, 440; The Queen v Baden-Clay [2016] HCA 35; 258 CLR 308 (Baden-Clay) at [65]–[66].
(b)The appeal court is to make its own independent assessment of whether, on the evidence, there is a reasonable doubt as to guilt, but in doing so it must give full weight to the primacy of the jury and their “advantage” in “seeing and hearing” the witnesses: M v The Queen (1994) 181 CLR 487 (M v The Queen) at 492–494; MFAv The Queen [2002] HCA 53; 213 CLR 606 (MFA) at [59]; SKA v The Queen [2011] HCA 13; 243 CLR 400 (SKA) at [22]–[24]; Baden-Clay at [66]; Dickson v R [2017] NSWCCA 78; 94 NSWLR 476 at [84]–[85]; BI at [15].
(c)On an appeal against conviction on the ground that a verdict was unreasonable, the ultimate question is whether, upon the whole of the evidence, it was open to the jury to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the accused was guilty: M v The Queen at 494–495. The question is “whether the jury must, as distinct from might, have entertained a doubt about the appellant’s guilt”: Libke v The Queen [2007] HCA 30; 230 CLR 559 at [113]; M v The Queen at 492–494; Kaddour v R [2019] NSWCCA 90 (Kaddour) at [128].
(d)Where the asserted unreasonableness is based on inconsistency between verdicts, the relevant test is still one of unreasonableness, not inconsistency as such: MFA at [36]. A complaint of inconsistency will fail if the verdicts can be reconciled, i.e. if there is a logical basis for the different verdicts: MacKenzie v The Queen (1996) 190 CLR 348 (MacKenzie) at 369; MFA at [42]. Expressed slightly differently, an appellant must establish that the different verdicts are “an affront to logic and commonsense”: MacKenzie at 368; MFA at [86].
(e)The focus of an unreasonableness inquiry is upon any explanation for the acquittals (not the convictions), other than doubts, about the complainant’s credibility: TK v R [2009] NSWCCA 151; 74 NSWLR 299 at [128], [130] (Simpson J, McClellan CJ at CL and Latham J agreeing); Roos v R [2019] NSWCCA 67 (Roos) at [44]–[45].
(f)Even where different verdicts relate to counts arising from the same course of conduct, the verdicts may, as a matter of logic, be capable of standing together and may be consistent with the jury having performed its function properly: MacKenzie at 366; Roos at [42]–[43].
(g)Although the credit of one complainant is critical to the consideration of a number of alleged offences, different verdicts may be capable of reconciliation: MFA at [35]; BI at [13]. A verdict of not guilty does not necessarily imply that the complainant has been disbelieved, and may simply indicate that she has been found to be more reliable in relation to some aspect of her evidence than others: MFA at [34]. A jury may have considered the complainant’s evidence to be more reliable if, for example, the degree of detail and consistency of her account is greater in relation to some matters when compared to others: The Queen v Markuleski [2001] NSWCCA 290; 52 NSWLR 82 (Markuleski) at [34]; Walker v R [2019] NSWCCA 4 (Walker) at [108]; The Queen v BDH [2019] QCA 47 (BDH) at [115]–[117]. In other cases, while not disbelieving the complainant, the jury may have proceeded cautiously in relation to the “discharge of a heavy responsibility”: Markuleski at [219]–[221]; MFA at [34]; Roos at [43]. Jury directions emphasise the high standard of proof, and jurors may require some independent corroboration before they are satisfied beyond reasonable doubt of some allegations: MFA at [34]; MG vR [2017] NSWCCA 14 at [84]; Walker at [107] (Hoeben CJ at CL, Rothman and Price JJ agreeing).
Appellate case law is replete with examples where, after applying these principles, the court has refused an appeal alleging unreasonableness based on inconsistent verdicts, particularly in recent times.
In BI, this Court found that different verdicts could be explained by the differences in strength, clarity and detail in the complainant’s evidence and the presence of relevant complaint evidence or corroborative evidence: at [31], [36], [40], [41], [46]–[47] (referring to Doney v The Queen (1990) 171 CLR 207 at 211), [48], [76]–[79], [86]–[87].
In Walker, the appellant had been tried on allegations of sexual misconduct against a single complainant. The jury had returned a verdict of not guilty on 11 counts and guilty on five counts. The appeal was dismissed by the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal because the line of reasoning supporting the acquittals was “not far fetched or improbable” and the evidence allowed “the guilty verdicts and acquittal verdicts to be reconciled”: at [136].
In BDH, the Queensland Court of Appeal observed that, in relation to some matters, the complainant’s evidence had been supported in a number of respects (at [114]), contained a considerable degree of detail (at [115]–[116]), and the complainant had consistently described what had occurred (at [116]–[117]). The Court discounted the significance of the complainant’s lies about “silly things” and stated that, considering her age and discomfort with the subject matter, it was unsurprising that her evidence had contained inconsistencies and contradictions.
In Kaddour, an important witness had equivocated at the trial about evidence that he had given earlier. The NSW Court of Criminal Appeal held that the jury had been entitled to rely on part of the witness’s evidence (in particular, the witness’s earlier version of events), noting the other evidence that tended to support it and, therefore, “it [could not] be said that the jury must have entertained a doubt about the appellant’s guilt” (at [147]).
In Roos, the appellant had been tried on 15 counts alleging sexual misconduct upon his relatives (two brothers) and the jury had returned verdicts of guilty on nine counts of aggravated indecent assault on a child and verdicts of not guilty on the remaining six counts: five counts of sexual intercourse with a child and one count of assaulting a child years with intent to have sexual intercourse. Some of the sexual assault counts allegedly occurred during the same course of conduct as the indecent assault counts, and it was submitted that they reflected a compromise on the part of the jury. At [69], Gleeson JA (with whom Harrison and Davies JJ agreed) concluded that there was no inconsistency between the verdicts. The acquittals (which related to allegations of sexual intercourse, not aggravated indecent assault) could be explained by the jury approaching the criminal onus and standard of proof with the “utmost seriousness”, combined with the absence of specific corroboration of those allegations of sexual intercourse.
Is there a logical explanation for the acquittals?
In this case, there was a logical basis for the verdicts of acquittal other than the explanation that the complainant could not be believed about the incident generally.
The acquittals on the counts involving anal penetration can be explained rationally and credibly otherwise than by reference to doubts about N’s general credibility. In particular:
(a)N did not mention anal penetration in her initial complaints to her friend or her mother; her complaints of “sexual assault” and “having sex” did not suggest that the sexual interaction involved anal penetration.
(b)The original complaint to police at the family home was “he was trying to get it in my vagina I think, but he went up my bum. He really hurt”; did not support deliberate anal penetration.
(c)In the first evidence-in-chief interview, N initially said that the appellant’s penis had been “in my bum” and it was only as a result of police probing that she clarified that the expression was a reference to the penis being “all inside”.
(d)By her own account, N did not actually see the penis at the time of the alleged anal intercourse. Rather, largely on the basis that she had experienced extreme pain in her anal area, she concluded that it was due to anal penetration.
(e)N was sexually naïve and the jury may have concluded that there was a prospect that she had misinterpreted events, perhaps in the context of becoming increasingly shocked and disturbed as they unfolded.
(f)Despite the reference to excruciating pain caused by anal penetration, there was no supporting medical or other evidence. N herself did not observe any bleeding.
(g)The jury may have found that the tendency evidence (which related to kissing followed by digital penetration, a very similar scenario to that which, according to N, had occurred in July 2016) was less persuasive in relation to the allegations of anal penetration as compared to the allegations of digital penetration.
(h)The allegations of anal penetration were extremely serious and most unsavoury. When assessing the quality of the evidence that supported such charges and determining whether there was a reasonable doubt, the jury would have approached the task with the “utmost seriousness”.
(i)The cross-examination of N and the defence address focused on specific shortcomings in N’s evidence concerning the allegations of anal penetration, rather than specific shortcomings in her evidence supporting the other counts.
As to Count 2 (the second allegation of digital penetration), without reference to the complainant’s general credibility, the acquittal is logically explicable on the following bases:
(a)The evidence of this event was brief and lacking detail. By way of contrast, the evidence supporting Count 1, the first allegation of digital penetration was clear and detailed in relation to when the act occurred, what hand was used (the left hand), the sensation of sickness that the conduct provoked in N, the associated exchange between the appellant and N, and the means by which N tried to resist the appellant.
(b)Based on the complainant’s evidence, it was unclear how many episodes of digital penetration had occurred after the first penetration. It may be that the jury was simply not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the appellant had digitally penetrated N on a second (or any subsequent) occasion.
(c)The jury may have viewed the digital penetration as one more or less continuous event, justifying only one conviction.
(d)Alternatively, the jury may have felt that, in the absence of particularity about the second (or any subsequent) event of digital penetration, and in the context that they were convicting the appellant of one count of digital penetration, they could and should exercise caution in relation to convicting the appellant of the second allegation of digital penetration.
We are reinforced in our conclusions by the fact that the trial judge gave strong and clear directions concerning onus and standard of proof, separate consideration of the counts, and the assessment of evidence. His Honour directed the jury that they must carefully examine the complainant’s evidence and that, if they doubted her evidence on one count, they should take that doubt into account when considering her evidence on other counts.
Orders
The appeal is dismissed.
The verdicts on Counts 1, 4, 6 and 7 are confirmed.
| I certify that the preceding fifty-five [55] numbered paragraphs are a true copy of the Reasons for Judgment of the Court. Associate: Date: 17 May 2019 |
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