The Court of Appeal has dismissed J.D.’s appeal against his conviction on three counts of sexual assault, finding no basis to conclude that the trial was unfair or the verdict unsafe. The judgment dealt with the conviction appeal only and did not determine the appeal against sentence.
J.D. was convicted after a Circuit Court trial on 15 March 2017. He had faced 10 counts: eight sample counts and two relating to specific alleged incidents. The jury acquitted him on seven counts and convicted him on three. He was later sentenced to three and a half years in prison, with the final 12 months suspended.
The allegations concerned touching and rubbing over the complainant’s underwear when she was aged between seven and nine. The Court of Appeal’s judgment describes her as a niece by marriage of J.D. The allegations did not involve penetration.
The appeal raised five grounds. The court upheld the trial judge’s decision to admit a video recording of the complainant’s Garda interview, rejecting the argument that the absence of a warning about the consequences of lying made admission unfair. It said the interviewers had taken care to establish that the nine-year-old understood the difference between truth and lies.
The court also rejected challenges based on a mistaken statement during the prosecution’s opening, the refusal to withdraw the case from the jury, and the prosecution’s cross-examination of J.D. It said differences between the complainant’s recorded interview and her trial evidence were matters for the jury to assess. It found that the prosecution had cross-examined J.D. and was not required to put its case to him in a particular formula.
The final ground argued that the guilty verdict on one sample count was inconsistent with acquittals on the other sample counts. The court said the jury had been told to consider each count separately and that the evidence could support its verdicts. It concluded that J.D. had not established that the verdicts were perverse.
The Court of Appeal dismissed all five conviction grounds and the appeal.