The Court of Criminal Appeal set aside Peter Dolan’s conviction for rape and directed a retrial, finding that the trial judge had not given a reasoned legal basis for refusing to warn the jury about the complainant’s uncorroborated evidence.
The court, comprising Kearns, McKechnie and Hanna JJ., said the appeal concerned only how the trial judge dealt with the warning request. It did not decide whether evidence at the trial amounted to corroboration.
Dolan had been convicted in the Central Criminal Court on 30 March 2006 of rape, including anal rape, and assault. The charges related to an incident alleged to have occurred in a hostel in Dún Laoghaire in the early hours of 13 March 1999. The complainant testified that Dolan forced sexual acts on her. A hostel staff member said they heard shouting and screaming, and a garda testified to seeing bleeding near the complainant’s anus and bruising on her buttocks. The judgment records that the complainant initially declined to make a complaint or undergo a formal medical examination, then made a complaint after returning from England the following day.
At the end of the prosecution case, the defence said it would call no evidence and asked the trial judge to consider a warning under section 7(1) of the Criminal Law (Rape) (Amendment) Act 1990. Defence counsel and the trial judge agreed there was no corroboration, while the prosecution said potentially corroborative material would be dangerous to treat as such.
The trial judge declined to give the warning, referring to a view he attributed to a former judge that such warnings were demeaning to women and suggesting the Court of Criminal Appeal was seeking to overrule legislation. The appeal court said it could find no basis for the attributed comment and described the trial judge’s remarks about the appeal court as inappropriate and without foundation.
The appeal court said a warning was discretionary, but an important ruling had to disclose a reasoned decision based on legal principle. It found the ruling did not meet that standard. The court also said the jury’s verdict—convicting on anal rape while acquitting on the other rape charges—made the issue significant. The absence of clarity in the jury charge created an apprehension that jurors may have treated evidence of bleeding as corroboration, though the appeal court expressed no view on whether it was.
The court held the rape conviction unsafe, set it aside and ordered a retrial. It dismissed the appeal against the assault conviction and said it would consider an appeal against the severity of sentence in due course.