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A jury’s verdicts are not logically inconsistent merely because it accepts one part of a witness’s evidence but rejects, or has doubts about, another part. Intervention on that ground is warranted only where no reasonable jury, properly considering the evidence, could reach the conclusions represented by the verdicts.

A conviction may nevertheless be unsafe where serious investigative failures deprive the jury of a proper means of testing crucial evidence. Missing potentially decisive CCTV material, defective investigative interviewing, and major inconsistencies in the central witness’s accounts required the appellate court to assess whether a reasonable jury could safely reach the conviction.

The appellant, aged 15 and with learning difficulties, was convicted at Harrow Crown Court on 21 April 2010 of false imprisonment. The prosecution alleged that he and three other boys forced a girl of similar age to travel by bus and then took her to a secluded area. The appellant’s account was that he travelled with her alone and that any sexual activity was consensual.

The jury acquitted him of rape but convicted him of false imprisonment. The appeal challenged the verdicts as inconsistent and also raised the safety of the conviction. The evidence was affected by the police failure to preserve potentially important bus CCTV and by an improperly conducted ABE interview which contributed to substantial inconsistencies in the complainant’s accounts.

1. Appeal allowed; conviction quashed. The acquittal of rape and conviction of false imprisonment were not, of themselves, logically inconsistent. A jury may accept a witness’s evidence on one matter while having doubts about another. It was open to the jury to be sure that the complainant had been compelled to make the journey, while doubting the alleged sexual activity.

2. The relevant inquiry in a true inconsistency challenge is whether no reasonable jury, properly applying its mind to the evidence, could have reached the conclusions represented by the impugned verdicts. The court referred to R v Durante 56 Cr.App.R. 708 for that principle.

3. However, the conviction was unsafe on the wider assessment of the evidence and the investigation. The police neither preserved the bus CCTV nor made a reliable record of what had been viewed. That evidence could have materially assisted the defence’s account that the complainant travelled with the appellant alone. The trial judge directed the jury about the absence of CCTV, but the court considered that its full significance could not have been clear.

4. The defective ABE interview compounded the difficulty. It included impermissible suggestions, and the complainant’s accounts contained major inconsistencies about the alleged sexual conduct, the persons involved, and the journey. In those circumstances, and bearing in mind the appellant’s lack of previous convictions, no reasonable jury could safely conclude that four boys had forced the complainant to make the journey.

5. The court’s conclusion concerned the safety of the conviction and did not reflect adversely upon the complainant, whose evidence the court had not heard. The false-imprisonment conviction was quashed.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): In [2010] EWCA Crim 2422, allowed the appeal and quashed the conviction for false imprisonment as unsafe.

• Harrow Crown Court: On 21 April 2010, convicted the appellant of false imprisonment and acquitted him of rape. A further rape allegation had been withdrawn from the jury.