The Supreme Court has quashed the conviction of a medical doctor for indecent assault, finding a real possibility that jurors drew an impermissible inference from interview material placed before them without guidance on how to treat it.
The appeal concerned one count arising from an allegation that, during a home visit in December 1989, the doctor indecently assaulted a complainant while examining her. The complaint was made to gardaí in October 2010. The doctor was arrested for questioning in June 2011 and brought a prepared statement, in which he denied remembering a physical examination and described the allegation as false.
When asked about the complainant’s account, he repeatedly said he had nothing to add to what was in his statement. At his second trial, the prosecution introduced evidence of those exchanges, and the full interview memorandum was given to the jury as an exhibit. The trial judge declined to discharge the jury after the defence objected, saying the doctor’s response differed from simply saying “no comment”. The jury convicted him. He was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment; the Court of Appeal later reduced the sentence to 12 months while rejecting his appeal against conviction.
The Supreme Court considered whether the answers were relevant evidence or an exercise of the constitutional right to silence. Justice Iseult O’Malley said that giving a voluntary statement waived that right only to that extent; it did not necessarily waive the right to refuse later questions. A waiver could not be inferred from ambiguous words, and the interview had to be considered in context.
Justice O’Malley said the trial judge had not explained why the disputed material was relevant or why its prejudicial effect did not outweigh its value. The jury also received no direction on how to draw inferences from it. The prosecution did not refer to the exchanges in closing submissions, and the trial judge did not mention them in his summary of the evidence, but the full interview notes were read to the jury and left unedited as an exhibit.
The Court said it could not discount the real possibility that jurors treated the doctor’s refusal to engage with specific questions as damaging to the credibility of his sworn evidence. It allowed the appeal and quashed the conviction. The judgment does not record an order for a retrial.