The Court of Criminal Appeal has dismissed Edward Piotrowski’s appeal against his convictions for offences arising from an incident at a house in the midlands in November 2007. The court also refused his application to introduce further evidence. His appeal against sentence was left for a later hearing.
Piotrowski had pleaded guilty to assault causing harm to Mr Y. A jury later found him guilty of the other seven counts, which included aggravated burglary, false imprisonment, aggravated sexual assault and rape. He was sentenced in January 2010, including to life imprisonment on each rape count and the false-imprisonment count. The judgment addressed conviction only; it did not decide the sentence appeal.
The proposed new evidence was Piotrowski’s account that associates of Ms Z had threatened his family in Poland and that those threats affected how he instructed his lawyers and conducted his defence. The court said there was no independent or objective evidence supporting the alleged threats. It also found an inconsistency between the conditions he said had been imposed and the defence actually presented at trial. The court concluded the material did not establish exceptional circumstances for admitting evidence that was, or ought to have been, available at trial.
The appeal challenged several parts of the trial, including the judge’s directions to the jury, evidential rulings and interventions during cross-examination. The appeal court rejected the grounds argued before it, finding that the jury had been adequately directed, the substance of the defence had been put, and the challenged evidence was admissible or its admission did not make the convictions unsafe. It said additional questions put to the jury were appropriate in this case, while emphasising that such questions should be exceptional and that parties should ordinarily be heard on whether to ask them and on their form.
Two appeal grounds were not pursued, and the court made no comment on them. Considering the argued grounds both individually and cumulatively, it found no legitimate basis to overturn the jury’s verdicts. The conviction appeal was dismissed, and the sentence appeal was to be listed in due course.