The Court of Appeal has quashed four convictions against an anonymised appellant after concluding that post-trial social welfare records might have led a jury to doubt whether the complainant moved into a rented house before turning 15. The court dismissed the appeal on the remaining counts.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Birmingham on 12 December 2017, concerned an appeal against convictions and sentence. The court dealt only with the conviction appeal. The appellant had been convicted in the Central Criminal Court of 15 counts of rape under section 4 and one count of sexual assault. The appeal court quashed convictions on counts 1, 2, 7 and 23, relating to the period before 1 January 1999. It dismissed the appeal in relation to the other counts. The judgment does not determine the separate appeal against sentence.
At trial, the complainant said that the appellant, his uncle, began sexually abusing him after they moved from a caravan to a rented house. The complainant said he was nearly 15 when they moved. The prosecution alleged that sexual activity began before his 15th birthday and was non-consensual; the defence said it began later and was consensual. The appellant and complainant’s shared residence and sexual relationship were not disputed, but the timing and circumstances were contested.
The appellant sought to introduce further Department of Social Protection material obtained after trial. The records showed rent supplement payments from May 1999 and an increase to the appellant’s Jobseekers Allowance in respect of the complainant from December 1999. The department could not confirm the appellant’s address because records had been purged. The appellant argued the material supported a later move into the house. The prosecution submitted that it showed benefit claim dates, not when he began living there.
The Court of Appeal said the records did not establish when the move occurred and noted weaknesses in the department’s address records. But it concluded that, had the information been available at trial, it might have caused the jury to doubt beyond reasonable doubt that the move happened before the complainant turned 15. The court therefore admitted the evidence and quashed the four convictions concerning the pre-1999 period.
The court found that the new material did not have the potential to affect the jury’s assessment of the complainant generally or the remaining counts. It also rejected two other grounds: that the trial judge had wrongly instructed the jury about the appellant’s Garda interview answers, and that she had failed to give a special caution about possible improper motive. The court said the judge’s direction on lies made clear that they did not necessarily establish guilt, and that her corroboration warning addressed the evidence raised about motive.