The Court of Appeal has dismissed J.K.’s appeal against convictions for four counts of rape and one count of attempted rape, affirming the convictions after rejecting all seven grounds raised by the defence.
The judgment, delivered by Birmingham P. on 8 May 2020, concerned a retrial in the Central Criminal Court. J.K. had been sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment for the rape offences and a concurrent six-year term for attempted rape. The final year of the nine-year net sentence was suspended.
The charges related to events between January 1984 and the end of 1986. The complainant, described in the judgment as J.K.’s young cousin, was just short of eight when the attempted rape was alleged to have occurred. The other counts related to a period when J.K. was living at the complainant’s home and, according to her evidence, regularly babysitting her and her brother. J.K. was 17 at the time of the first alleged offence. An earlier trial had ended inconclusively.
The appeal challenged, among other matters, the admission of evidence from the complainant’s brother, the judge’s directions to the jury on motive and delay, the refusal to give a corroboration warning, and comments about the complainant later living with J.K.’s father. It also challenged directions concerning J.K.’s Garda interview and the jury’s question about the description of the complainant’s home.
The Court of Appeal found the brother’s evidence relevant and admissible, saying the defence could challenge its reliability through cross-examination. It held that the trial judge had properly explained that the prosecution could raise motive without shifting the burden of proof. The decision not to give a corroboration warning was within the trial judge’s discretion, the appeal court said, and it found no error in the judge’s comments on the issues of delay, the complainant’s living arrangements or the interview record.
On the jury’s question about the house, the appeal court said the trial judge was right to tell jurors that the evidence had finished and found nothing objectionable in giving the planned direction on a majority verdict. The court concluded that none of the grounds undermined the trial’s fairness or the safety of the verdict. It dismissed the appeal and affirmed the convictions.