The Court of Criminal Appeal has declined to quash a man’s convictions on three counts of sexual assault against three girls, rejecting challenges to the trial judge’s directions on corroboration and the prosecution’s handling of evidence across the counts.
The appeal concerned convictions returned after a six-day trial on 17 May 2010. The man was sentenced on 14 October 2010 to two years and three months’ imprisonment on each of counts one and two, and three years on count three, with the terms consecutive. The judgment says the sentences totalled seven and a half years.
The assaults were alleged to have taken place in a housing estate in or near a rural Irish town. One girl was said to have been at the house to babysit; the other two were attending a sleepover as friends of the man’s daughter. The judgment records that the girls were 13 or 14 and that the alleged incidents occurred between December 2006 and February 2007. A complaint was made in April 2007. A fourth count involving another girl had originally been included but was not proceeded with.
The appellant argued that the trial judge had told the jury that each complainant’s evidence necessarily corroborated the others. He also said the judge had not adequately warned of possible contamination between the girls, who were young and close neighbours. A separate complaint concerned the prosecution’s failure to make clear in its opening that it relied on what was described as system evidence, or to apply in advance to have that evidence admitted.
The appeal court said it did not believe the trial judge had told the jury that the accounts necessarily corroborated one another. The judge had explained that corroboration had to be independent evidence, and left it to the jury to decide as a matter of fact whether the accounts were corroborative. The defence had addressed features of the evidence that could cast doubt on its accuracy or independence.
The court also noted that the defence knew the evidence from the Book of Evidence, did not apply to sever the indictment, and did not argue before the evidence was heard that it was inadmissible. It said evidence from multiple complainants could be considered as system evidence and, if accepted as independent, could also have a corroborative effect. The court distinguished system evidence from similar fact evidence, which it said was not available in this case.
The court therefore declined to quash the convictions. The judgment’s concluding order addresses the convictions; it does not set out a separate determination of the sentence appeal.