Longman v The Queen

The applicant, Longman, sought special leave to appeal to the High Court of Australia against a decision of the Court of Criminal Appeal of Western Australia. The core of the dispute concerned the directions a trial judge must give to a jury in a sexual assault case where the sole evidence against the accused is the complainant's testimony, particularly when the alleged incidents occurred many years prior.

The legal issue before the High Court was whether the statutory abrogation of the common law corroboration rule in Western Australia relieved a trial judge of any obligation to direct the jury on the need for careful scrutiny of the complainant's testimony. The applicant argued that despite the abrogation of the strict corroboration rule, a judicial obligation to caution the jury regarding the potential unreliability of uncorroborated evidence in sexual assault cases, especially those involving stale allegations, persisted. This contrasted with the apparent views of the Courts of Criminal Appeal in New South Wales and South Australia.

The applicant referred to the High Court's formulation of the common law corroboration rule in *Carr v The Queen*, which identified a limited range of cases requiring special warnings due to intrinsic unreliability, including sexual offences. The applicant highlighted a Western Australian Court of Criminal Appeal decision in *Miller v The Queen* which suggested that the rule of practice regarding sexual offences had not hardened in the same way as for accomplices, and that a direction to exercise caution was still desirable. This was in line with the principle from *Kelleher v The Queen* that a jury may act on a complainant's word alone but should exercise considerable caution due to the ease with which such charges can be made and the difficulty of rebuttal. The applicant contended that the 1985 amendment to the *Evidence Act* of Western Australia, which abrogated the corroboration rule, did not eliminate this need for a cautionary direction.