The Court of Appeal has dismissed M.C.’s appeal against his conviction for rape, finding that the case was properly left to the jury and that the trial judge’s directions did not make the trial unsatisfactory or the conviction unsafe.
M.C. had pleaded guilty to assault causing harm and not guilty to rape. After a seven-day trial, a jury convicted him of rape on 13 October 2017. He was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment for rape and a concurrent two-year term for assault, with the final two years suspended. The appeal concerned the rape conviction.
The offences were alleged to have occurred at the couple’s rural midlands home on 8 January 2015. The complainant, M.C.’s wife, said he assaulted her and threatened to rape her before they had intercourse. She told the jury that she participated voluntarily to avoid rape, but also said she feared he might attack or kill her. M.C. accepted that he had assaulted her but maintained in Garda interviews and a statement that the intercourse was consensual and that he believed she was consenting.
The defence argued that the evidence did not allow a jury to find beyond reasonable doubt either that the complainant had not consented or that M.C. knew she was not consenting, or was reckless about whether she consented. It asked the trial judge to direct an acquittal. The judge refused, ruling that the evidence could allow a properly instructed jury to find there was no consent and that M.C. was reckless.
The appeal court said the trial judge had to consider all the evidence, rather than particular answers in isolation. A jury could view the assault, the threat to rape, the intercourse and the complainant’s continuing fear as a connected sequence, and could conclude that she had not freely consented and that M.C. knew, or at least believed it possible, that she was not consenting. The court held that the case was properly left to the jury.
M.C. also challenged the explanation of recklessness, arguing that the jury should have been told that he had to consciously recognise the risk of non-consent and proceed despite it. The court said it might have been preferable to explain advertence to risk expressly, but found no positive misstatement of the law and did not uphold that ground.
The appeal court also rejected the complaint about the trial judge’s treatment of section 9 of the Criminal Law (Rape) (Amendment) Act 1990, which provides that failure to resist does not by itself amount to consent. It concluded that the charge and further direction did not detract from that principle. The appeal was dismissed; the conviction and sentence were not disturbed.