Alan Hanley loses appeal against rape conviction

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

Alan Hanley’s appeal against a rape conviction was dismissed by the Court of Appeal on 4 February 2021. Mr Justice McCarthy delivered the judgment. The proceedings were reported on 4 February 2021.

He had been sentenced on 9 May 2019 to 12 years’ imprisonment, backdated to 5 May 2012, with six years’ post-release supervision.

Hanley was convicted in the Central Criminal Court on 22 February 2019 of count one of rape under section 2 of the Criminal Law (Rape) Act 1981, as amended. He faced three rape counts, but the jury failed to agree on counts two and three.

This was his third trial on those counts. The first jury had disagreed. At the second trial, he was convicted of all three rape counts, but those convictions were quashed on appeal.

He had pleaded guilty at his first trial to assault causing harm under section 3 of the Non-Fatal Offences against the Person Act 1997, arising from the same circumstances.

In the latest appeal, the defence argued that the jury should have been warned that the complainant’s distress, witnessed by members of the public, amounted only to weak corroboration in the circumstances.

The judgment also described the defence’s challenge to changes in the complainant’s evidence about ejaculation. No semen was found on vaginal swabs, and the defence questioned whether she had modified her account after learning the forensic findings. The earlier appeal court had found those concerns sufficiently substantial to require a corroboration warning.

Dismissing the latest appeal, the court held that the trial judge was right to tell jurors that distress could provide strong corroboration and to emphasise their role in assessing it.