Read the full judgment text of CACC 000459/2001 on BabelCite. This Court of Appeal judgment was delivered on 25 July 2003 before Stuart-Moore VP, Yeung JA, Ma JA.
Criminal law – murder – retrial ordered by Court of Final Appeal – prosecution case dependent on confessional statements – defence alleging fabrication or involuntariness – jury question on treatment of prosecution and defence evidence – judge's direction that any defence evidence not believed as true must be disregarded for all purposes – whether misdirection – Court of Appeal holding that direction was a material misdirection – jury should take into account defence evidence that may be true, not only that which it is satisfied is true – burden of proof lies on prosecution and there is no burden on the defence – direction particularly required where case turns on conflict between prosecution and defence evidence and where jury's question demonstrates difficulty with burden and standard of proof – 5-to-2 majority verdicts indicative of jury difficulty – convictions of 1st and 2nd Applicants quashed – 3rd Applicant's application for leave to appeal against sentence not dealt with – consequential orders and question of any further retrial left for further submissions – Applicants to remain in custody pending further order – other grounds of appeal (including alleged appearance of bias arising from trial judge's earlier involvement on different constitution of Court of Appeal in 3rd Applicant's previous sentence appeal) not determined, described as extremely weak.
Legal issues: Misdirection on treatment of defence evidence when jury is in doubt
Outcome: Convictions of the 1st and 2nd Applicants quashed. The 3rd Applicant's application for leave to appeal against sentence was not dealt with and was left for further submissions on consequential matters; the Applicants were to remain in custody pending such submissions.
Cites 2 cases