Karunaratne v The Queen

Neil Dias Karunaratne applied to the High Court of Australia for special leave to appeal against a conviction for unlawful carnal knowledge. The complainant in the case had withdrawn her identification of the applicant. The applicant had already served his sentence but sought to appeal as he believed the conviction rendered him unemployable. The respondent was the Crown.

The central legal issue before the High Court was whether the principles governing the grant of a new trial when fresh evidence emerges, as established in *Gallagher*, applied, or whether a different test, as articulated in *Cody*, was appropriate for cases involving a complainant's recantation. The applicant contended that *Gallagher* should apply, while the Court of Criminal Appeal had favoured the approach in *Cody*.

The Court of Criminal Appeal had relied on a passage from *Cody* which suggested that a witness's declaration that their evidence was false, or that they had been mistaken, did not automatically warrant a new trial. Instead, it required an "added factor" to demonstrate that the verdict was open to objection due to the fresh evidence. The applicant argued that the Court of Criminal Appeal had interpreted this to mean that if a recantation could be explained by factors such as pressure or motive, it might not lead to a new trial, thereby creating a potentially restrictive approach to recantations.