The Court of Criminal Appeal allowed Rafal Adach’s appeal against his rape conviction and set aside the verdict, finding that the trial judge’s direction to the jury risked improperly influencing its deliberations.
The appeal concerned remarks made while the jury was considering its verdict. The judge told jurors that a disagreement was “highly undesirable” and referred to the prospect of a retrial, its use of resources and costs, and stress for the complainant and accused. He urged the jury to make its best effort to reach a verdict.
The court said jurors must decide a case according to the evidence and remain free from pressure based on matters outside that task. Public resources, trial costs and hardship to the parties were irrelevant to the jury’s decision. The court held that such references should be avoided.
In assessing the effect of the remarks, the court considered the case’s circumstances and the jury’s deliberations. The jury had earlier described itself as “very split”. After the direction, it deliberated for about two further hours before returning an 11-to-one guilty verdict. The court said the time between the direction and verdict was relevant, but not decisive.
The judgment concluded that, in the financial climate at the time, it was reasonably possible that the reference to public resources and costs influenced one or more jurors. The appeal court said the remarks were likely to have inappropriately influenced the jury, compromising the freedom required for its decision.
Adach had been convicted by a majority after a six-day trial of a single count of rape, alleged to have occurred at an address in County Wicklow on 29 September 2007. He had received a seven-year prison sentence in July 2010, backdated to 11 September 2008. The appeal court’s order set aside the conviction; the judgment did not decide the other grounds of appeal, which it said were unnecessary to consider.