Ekisa v The Queen

In the South Australian Court of Criminal Appeal, Joshua Ekisa appealed his conviction for one count of rape, having been acquitted of a second count of rape by the same jury. The appeal was based on the contention that the jury's verdicts were factually or logically inconsistent, rendering the guilty verdict unreasonable and unsupported by the evidence. The charges arose from an incident at the complainant's home in the early hours of 27 March 2017, following a night out.

The central legal issue before the Court was whether the jury's finding of guilt on one count of rape and not guilty on another count of rape, arising from the same incident, was so inconsistent as to be unreasonable and incapable of standing. This required the Court to consider the evidence presented at trial and determine if the verdicts could be rationally explained by the jury's assessment of the facts and the law.

The Court of Criminal Appeal reasoned that the jury was entitled to accept parts of the complainant's evidence and reject other parts, and similarly, to accept parts of the appellant's evidence and reject other parts. The jury's verdicts indicated that they accepted the complainant's evidence that the appellant had inserted a finger into her vagina without consent (count 1), but did not accept her evidence that he had subsequently re-inserted a finger into her vagina after removing her tampon and while she was resisting (count 2). The Court found that this distinction was capable of being rationally explained by the evidence, particularly the complainant's evidence that she had managed to free her hands and punch the appellant before the events related to count 2. Therefore, the guilty verdict on count 1 was not rendered unreasonable by the not guilty verdict on count 2. The appeal was dismissed.