Stafford v The Queen

Graham Stuart Stafford applied for special leave to appeal to the High Court of Australia against a decision of the Queensland Court of Appeal. The applicant's complaint concerned the directions given by the trial judge to the jury.

The central legal issue before the High Court was whether the trial judge's directions to the jury had the effect of permitting greater scrutiny of the applicant's evidence solely because he was the accused, thereby potentially diminishing his credibility. This was framed by reference to a rule established in *R v Robinson*. The Court of Appeal had acknowledged that the directions could be read as a misdirection but concluded that, in the circumstances of the case, they did more good than harm from the accused's perspective.

The applicant submitted that the Court of Appeal erred in its characterisation of the trial judge's motivation and in its reasoning that the strength of the Crown's case excused a less stringent application of the *Robinson* rule. The applicant argued that the Court of Appeal's approach, which appeared to measure the required judicial direction against the strength of the prosecution's case, was flawed. The Court of Appeal's reasoning suggested that if the trial judge perceived hostility from the jury towards the accused's evidence, the directions could be seen as an attempt to ensure fairness, and that in cases with a strong Crown case followed by the accused giving evidence, there was a risk of the jury summarily rejecting that evidence regardless of judicial warnings.