JVG, R. v

A good-character direction must, read as a whole, make clear that the jury should take the defendant’s good character into account both when assessing credibility and when considering the likelihood of offending. Imperfect wording will not make the direction defective where those essential matters have been clearly conveyed.

A trial judge may comment robustly on the evidence and draw attention to available inferences, provided the comments have an evidential basis, are fair, and leave the ultimate assessment to the jury. Verdicts reached by different juries at separate trials are not inconsistent merely because the first jury had doubts on other counts.

The appellant was convicted at a retrial in the Crown Court at Kingston of two counts of assault of a child under 13 by penetration and two counts of causing or inciting a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity. He received an aggregate sentence of nine years’ imprisonment.

The allegations concerned repeated sexual conduct towards his granddaughter over several years. The prosecution relied principally on the complainant’s evidence and DNA evidence from a bloodstained mattress. The appellant denied all sexual conduct.

He appealed against conviction on the grounds that the good-character direction was defective and that the trial judge’s summing-up was biased or unfair. He also renewed an application for leave to contend that the retrial verdicts were inconsistent with acquittals at the first trial.

1. The appeal was dismissed, and the renewed application for leave to appeal on the proposed inconsistency ground was refused.
2. The judge’s good-character direction was adequate when read as a whole. He had expressly directed the jury to take the appellant’s good character into account both in assessing his credibility and in considering whether he was likely to have committed the offences. The later references to alleged offences being concealed, to the appellant’s “previous” good character, and to what the jury “may think” were unfortunate, but did not neutralise those clear directions. The jury would have understood that they had to consider the evidence, while the weight to give it remained for them.
3. Moustakim [2008] EWCA Crim 3096 was distinguishable. In that case, the direction lacked a positive instruction to use good character in the defendant’s favour and inadequately expressed both limbs of the direction. Those defects were absent here.
4. The judge was entitled to comment on the evidence concerning the complainant’s changing understanding of sexual impropriety, the use of sexual language, the menstrual blood on the mattress, the appellant’s claimed sexual dysfunction, the cards, and the possible motive for fabrication. The comments had an evidential basis and identified matters for the jury’s assessment. The judge did not act with bias or unfairness, and had reminded the jury that they were not bound by any apparent view of the case.
5. The acquittals and disagreements reached by the first jury did not make the retrial convictions unsafe. The second jury was entitled to reach its own verdicts on the counts before it.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) — by [2015] EWCA Crim 1630, dismissed the appeal against conviction and refused the renewed application for leave to appeal on the third ground.
• Crown Court at Kingston — at a retrial before Recorder Featherby, convicted the appellant on four sexual-offence counts on 27 March 2015 and imposed an aggregate sentence of nine years’ imprisonment on 1 May 2015.
• Earlier Crown Court trial — the appellant was acquitted on five counts; the jury did not reach verdicts on the remaining counts, leading to the retrial.