The Supreme Court has affirmed J.C.’s acquittal and declined to order a retrial, although a majority had earlier ruled that evidence excluded at the original trial should have been admitted under a new test for evidence obtained under search warrants.
The decision, delivered by Chief Justice Susan Denham on 22 June 2015, concerned the final stage of an appeal by the Director of Public Prosecutions under section 23 of the Criminal Procedure Act 2010. The question before the Court was whether to quash the acquittal and direct a retrial after deciding the substantive legal issues.
In its decision of 15 April 2015, a majority held that an appeal about the exclusion of evidence could be brought under section 23. A majority also concluded that the Supreme Court’s 1990 decision in The People (DPP) v Kenny had been wrongly decided and set out a new test. Applying that test to this case, the majority considered that the evidence should have been admitted. The judgment said the trial judge had been bound by Kenny when she excluded it.
The DPP submitted that a retrial was in the interests of justice. J.C.’s counsel opposed quashing the acquittal, arguing that the circumstances did not justify putting the respondent on trial again.
Section 23 allows the Court to order a retrial if statutory conditions are met and, taking account of specified factors, a retrial is in the interests of justice. Those factors include whether a fair retrial is likely, the time since the alleged conduct, the interests of any victim and other relevant matters. The Court said the list was not exhaustive and that the principle of double jeopardy remained relevant.
The judgment noted that four years had passed since the alleged offences and three years since the acquittal in the Circuit Court. Although robbery was described as a grave offence, the Court had no information about the impact on the three people alleged to have been injured parties. It also treated the overruling of Kenny, which had governed the law for more than 20 years, as significant. A retrial would apply the new legal principles to J.C., unlike the original trial.
In the judgment’s conclusion, Denham said success on the substantive appeal did not automatically require a retrial. She would affirm the acquittal in all the circumstances. No retrial was ordered.