The defendant was accused of a sexual assault. A witness referred to his having been in prison. The trial judge refused to discharge the jury, stating that the remark could well have been taken to mean that that the defendant was a dishonest person whose word could not be believed, rather than that he had been convicted of a sexual offence, which was not the inevitable inference to be drawn from the remark.
Held: The judge had applied the wrong test.
Roch LJ said: ‘In weighing up the danger of bias on the part of this jury arising from these answers, the judge should, in our judgment, have approached the issue on the basis of the more prejudicial meaning that could reasonably be placed on these answers rather than some lesser prejudicial interpretation.’
Judges:
Roch LJ
Citations:
[1999] 1 Cr App R 274
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Mitcham v The Queen PC 16-Mar-2009
(Saint Christopher and Nevis) The applicant appealed against his sentence of death following his conviction for murder. He had been granted a stay of execution pending the appeal to the board and had since been given leave to appeal against . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Criminal Practice
Updated: 11 May 2022; Ref: scu.321823