The Court of Appeal has quashed a rape conviction after finding that comments by the trial judge significantly diluted a warning to the jury about the effects of delay.
The appeal concerned a conviction returned on 16 May 2018. The appellant, identified in the judgment as T G, had been found guilty of rape. The jury found him not guilty on two sexual assault counts. The alleged offence was said to have occurred between 1 October 1983 and 1 July 1984, when the complainant, identified as DW, was 15.
The prosecution case, as summarised in the judgment, was that DW was babysitting the appellant’s children when he summoned her to a bedroom, showed her pornographic magazines and raped her. She later disclosed the allegation to family members, but did not make a formal complaint to Gardaí until June 2014.
On appeal, the appellant argued, among other things, that the passage of time had deprived him of potentially useful witnesses and employment records, and that the trial judge’s directions did not adequately address the risks created by the delay. The Court of Appeal rejected the claim that the unavailable witnesses and records made the trial inherently unfair. It described their potential evidential value as speculative, noting that the appellant had accepted in interview that DW babysat his children when she was around 15 or 16.
The court also rejected the challenge to the judge’s refusal to give a corroboration warning. It said that decision remained within the trial judge’s discretion and that the evidence did not require a warning as a matter of principle. The court separately considered the admission, during re-examination, of evidence about an alleged encounter at a family wedding in 1996. It concluded that admitting the evidence did not make the trial unfair.
The successful ground concerned the delay warning. The appeal judges accepted that the trial judge had warned the jury about the difficulties delay could cause an accused person. But after the warning, the judge described the complainant’s account as containing “a lot of detail,” referring to the appellant’s work, his return home, and the account of the bedroom encounter.
The Court of Appeal said those matters concerned the immediate circumstances of the alleged offence and did not amount to the kind of detail suggested by the judge. It found that the comments diluted the warning and made the trial unsatisfactory.
The court allowed the appeal on that sole ground and quashed the conviction. It did not address the other grounds of appeal. The judgment does not state any further order.