Case Law - Corroboration - DPP v PB 2021 IECA 152

Amongst a number of grounds of appeal, the appellant submitted that the corroboration warning was not adequate in the circumstances:

34. Grounds 8 and 9 were formulated in the following way: (8) The trial judge erred in law in failing to give a proper corroboration warning. (9) The trial judge erred in law in failing to charge the jury properly regarding the lack of corroboration.

35. The appellant says that while the judge correctly decided to give a corroboration warning, he failed to give a sufficiently clear warning and failed to put the warning in context. What was lacking from the case was a warning in clear and unambiguous terms. Indeed, it is said that having embarked on a warning, the judge then proceeded to undermine what he was saying. It is said that this happened in a case where a strong and clear warning was called for. It is also said that the need for such a clear warning was highlighted by the fact that some 64 issues were raised with the complainant about which she had no memory.

36. The judge addressed the issue of corroboration on a number of occasions in the course of his charge. He did so first after dealing with the general principles which govern criminal trials, and he then returned to it at the stage in the charge when he was reviewing the evidence. In fact, what the judge had to say might arguably be regarded as unduly favourable to the defence, in that when he came to identify evidence that was capable of amounting to corroboration, he did not refer to the text messages sent by the appellant to Ms. O’Sullivan. Apparently, this was because he harboured some doubts about the text messages, but on the face of it, it would seem that these were messages that should have been free to be considered.

37. The corroboration issue was dealt with once more at the requisition stage. At that point, following a request from counsel, the judge explained to the jury that the reason he was giving a warning was because of the complainant’s poor memory and because of inconsistencies in her evidence.

38. The starting point for consideration of this has to be the fact that the giving of a warning is not mandatory, and that if a warning is given, the judge is not required to follow any particular form of words. In this case, the judge dealt with the issue of corroboration at two points during the course of his charge, and then dealt further with the issue in response to requisitions.

39. In this Court’s view, while what the judge had to say would not be described as a textbook corroboration warning, it was, in the circumstances of the case, more than adequate.

DPP v PB 2021 IECA 152.pdf

Download PDF • 137KB