Case note
Aggravated robbery conviction quashed
Convicted at a trial held in his absence while his co-accused was acquitted. The conviction was unsafe.
- Court
- Court of Appeal
- Counsel
- Q Duff and G Duff
- Charge
- Aggravated robbery
- Outcome
- Conviction quashed; no retrial
What happened
A man was confronted in his garage by three young men, assaulted, and robbed. Neighbours saw the attackers but did not know them. Half an hour later, CCTV caught three young men walking together nearby, one of them our client. All three were charged. At the District Court trial our client did not appear, and the trial went ahead without him. The jury acquitted his co-accused and found him guilty. He appealed on the ground that the verdict was unreasonable.
The point worth pausing on
The jury must consider each defendant separately. But the prosecution case against both men rested, to a reasonably significant extent, on one coincidence: three young men, broadly matching the descriptions, together near the scene 30 minutes after the attack. The two cases largely stood or fell together, and one had fallen.
The evidence specific to our client did not fill the gap. One eyewitness described the attacker as having extensive tattoos, and there was no evidence that he had them. In his police interview his neck and arms were covered, he was never asked about tattoos, and the arrest sheet that would ordinarily have recorded them was not produced. The Court had misgivings about the safety of the conviction, quashed it, and ordered no retrial, because the prosecution had failed to prove its case on the evidence it had.
An acquittal of one co-accused can expose the weakness of the case against the other.