The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal by T MCD against convictions for two counts of rape and two counts of indecent assault, concluding that the trial was not unfair and the verdicts were not unsafe.
In a judgment delivered on 21 March 2022, the court rejected the grounds advanced on appeal, including claims about inconsistencies in the complainant’s evidence, directions to the jury on delay and corroboration, and the judge’s decision to read the complainant’s testimony to the jury during deliberations.
T MCD was convicted following a trial in the Central Criminal Court in February 2020. The jury returned majority guilty verdicts on 14 February. He was later sentenced to an effective term of 10 years’ imprisonment, with one year suspended. The Court of Appeal was considering his appeal against conviction, not a fresh trial of the allegations.
The offences were alleged to have occurred between June 1982 and September 1984, when the complainant, identified in the judgment as SH, was aged between seven and nine. The judgment says the complainant’s first complaint to gardaí was in early 2016. It describes the complainant and appellant as first cousins and says the appellant sometimes carried out casual farm work on the complainant’s family farm. The judgment records that the alleged incidents were linked to farm activities, including tractor driving and haymaking.
The appellant argued that inconsistencies about whether two incidents occurred on the same day and about where incidents took place made the verdict unsafe. The Director of Public Prosecutions responded that these were matters for the jury. The appeal court agreed, noting that the inconsistencies had been addressed at trial and in the judge’s charge. It also said no application for a directed verdict had been made and there was no basis to conclude that the jury should have been discharged.
The court also rejected the challenge to the readback of the complainant’s evidence. The jury had asked for a transcript, which could not be provided to them. The judge read the transcript aloud after discussing the available options with counsel. The appeal court said the transcript gave a complete record of direct and cross-examination, and the jury had already seen and heard the complainant testify. It found no error in the judge’s response to the request.
On delay, the court described the trial judge’s direction as detailed and found no basis to condemn the approach taken. It also found the corroboration warning proper, noting that legislation did not require a particular form of words. The appeal was dismissed.