The Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal by Clement Limen against his convictions for raping two women and sexually assaulting one of them in his apartment in June 2014. The Court held that evidence from each complainant was admissible in relation to the other’s counts because the case involved “two complainants and one incident”.
The appeal focused on a prosecution closing speech that pointed to similarities between the women’s accounts and said those similarities could support each account. The defence argued that the jury should have been told not to rely on one complainant’s evidence to support the other’s. The trial judge declined to give a specific direction, after defence counsel accepted that raising corroboration might harm the defence. The jury was directed to consider each charge separately.
The women had been socialising together before meeting Limen in a nightclub and going with others to his apartment. They said they later remembered nothing for a period and woke to find him having intercourse with them. One said she woke on a couch; the other said she was in a bedroom. They left together in distress that morning. Limen told gardaí that one woman had initiated consensual intercourse, which he stopped, and that he had rejected the other woman’s advances. Toxicology tests found no drugs in the women, and nothing suspicious was found in liquid from glasses seized at the apartment. Medical evidence was consistent with their accounts but also with consensual intercourse or other possible explanations.
The Court distinguished the question of whether evidence could be considered across counts from whether it amounted to legal corroboration. It said the women’s accounts were admissible in respect of each count because each could have been called as a witness in a trial concerning only the other woman’s allegations. Their shared evening, presence in the apartment, departure together in distress, and the account of what happened when one found the other were relevant to the intertwined events and to Limen’s account to gardaí.
The judgment said that, in multiple-complainant cases, a judge may need to address possible collusion or innocent contamination, and may give a tailored warning. Where evidence is admissible across counts, jurors may be told in general terms to consider whether witnesses are truthful and uninfluenced by each other. They must still be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt on each count and must not convict solely because there are multiple accusers. The Court said “striking similarity” in the prosecution speech was unlikely to have conveyed a special legal meaning to the jury. It dismissed the appeal.