A youth who has already served a 12-month jail sentence after he was convicted in late 2000 for sexual assault and occasioning bodily harm to a girl has had his conviction quashed by the Court of Criminal Appeal.
No retrial was ordered as the youth has served his sentence.
At the time of the alleged assaults, the accused and the girl were both aged 13. The youth was convicted in October 2000 and sentenced to one year's detention on one count of sexual assault and one count of occasioning bodily harm, the sentences to run concurrently from October 23rd, 2000. The youth served his sentence and his appeal to the CCA was against the conviction only.
The CCA rejected a number of grounds of appeal but found in favour of the accused on a ground relating to the trial judge's charge to the jury concerning the matter of corroboration.
Giving the judgment of the CCA, Mrs Justice Catherine McGuinness - sitting with Mr Justice Daniel Herbert and Mr Justice Paul Butler - said a passage in the trial judge's charge concerning corroboration, taken as a whole, could have given rise to confusion in the minds of the jury. The possibility of such confusion was raised with considerable emphasis by defence counsel but no further reference to the matter was made by the trial judge in his recharge to the jury.
Any confusion which might have arisen from the judge's original charge, therefore, remained uncorrected and the trial was unsatisfactory in that important respect. On that basis the CCA would allow the appeal and quash the conviction.
In the appeal, it was submitted that the trial judge's charge to the jury was rendered unsatisfactory and unfair because the trial judge failed to point out unequivocally that there was no evidence in the case in law which could amount to corroboration. In the CCA's decision, Mrs Justice McGuinness said it was necessary for the trial judge to distinguish clearly between evidence that confirmed the offence was committed and evidence that connected the accused with the offence.
Only this second type of evidence would be "corroboration in the strict sense" in the context of the case. In saying there was no direct corroboration, the trial judge appeared to have accepted there was no evidence of this second type. However, his further direction to the jury to look for other evidence might well have suggested to them that there was some form of indirect corroboration available to them. This was likely to have given rise to confusion in the jury's minds.