The Supreme Court dismissed Thomas O’Regan’s appeal and upheld the refusal to admit fresh medical evidence in his appeal against a rape conviction. The Court said the proposed expert evidence did not establish that rape had not occurred, either as a certainty or a probability, and that no exceptional circumstances justified admitting it.
The appeal concerned a conviction by majority verdict at a 2003 Central Criminal Court trial. The complainant, identified in the judgment as P.D., was 14 at the time of the alleged assault in 1996. The first trial, in 2001, ended when the jury could not agree. O’Regan was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment after the second trial; he was granted bail pending his appeal in 2004.
The fresh evidence application relied on opinions from two experts retained by O’Regan’s new legal team after conviction. They assessed medical reports prepared following the complainant’s examination in June 1998. The reports had been disclosed to the defence before the trials. The new experts said the recorded findings were within normal limits and, in their view, were not consistent with the account of repeated penetration and bleeding. Neither expert had met or examined the complainant.
The prosecution obtained opinions from two further specialists. They referred to research showing that genital injuries may not be present after alleged penetration and may heal, and said a normal examination did not rule out non-consensual intercourse. The Supreme Court concluded that the medical opinions, considered together, did not support the claim that rape was impossible or probably had not occurred.
The Court of Criminal Appeal had refused the application in April 2006. It found the medical evidence was available to the defence and that the decision not to pursue it at trial was a considered tactical choice. The Supreme Court applied the fresh-evidence principles in *People v Willoughby*, which require exceptional circumstances, evidence not known and not reasonably obtainable at trial, credibility, and potential material importance assessed against the trial evidence as a whole.
The Court held that those principles governed the application and that no exceptional circumstances warranted admission. It said it was not necessary to prove unreasonable, irrational, illogical or negligent conduct by the defence. The Supreme Court therefore answered the certified questions against O’Regan and dismissed the appeal. The judgment addressed only whether the proposed evidence could be admitted on appeal; it did not retry the conviction.