Philip Norman v R

Section 74(3) of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 creates a rebuttable evidential presumption from a proved previous conviction. It does not make the conviction conclusive proof. A defendant may challenge both the conviction and the underlying facts through ordinary trial processes, including by giving evidence alone. Once the issue is properly raised, the jury must decide whether the contrary is proved on the balance of probabilities. Case management must prevent satellite litigation while preserving that statutory right. Where the previous and current allegations concern the same victim and overlapping evidence, the jury must assess credibility independently. A direction treating the earlier conviction as beyond challenge may remove a material issue and render the resulting convictions unsafe.

The appellant was convicted at the Crown Court at Harrow on a retrial of five counts of indecency with a child. At the earlier trial, he had been acquitted of six rape counts and one indecency count, convicted of two indecent assault counts, and the jury had been unable to agree on five further counts. At the retrial, the prosecution relied on the earlier convictions as bad-character evidence. The appellant denied both the current allegations and the facts underlying the earlier convictions. The appeal concerned whether the Recorder’s directions unlawfully prevented the jury from deciding whether he had rebutted the evidential presumption arising from those convictions, particularly where the same victim and overlapping evidence were involved.

The appeal was allowed and the appellant’s convictions on Counts 1–5 were quashed.

1. Section 74(3) of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 creates an evidential presumption that a proved previous conviction reflects commission of the offence. It does not make the conviction conclusive. A defendant may challenge both the fact of conviction and the underlying facts, using the ordinary processes of the criminal trial. If evidence is adduced, the question whether the contrary has been proved on the balance of probabilities is for the jury. There is no rule requiring evidence of a particular kind, and the defendant’s own evidence, including a bare denial, is not excluded as a matter of law. The court applied the principles in R v Carter [2007] EWCA Crim 1307, R v C [2010] EWCA Crim 2971 and R v Caine [2024] EWCA Crim 225.
2. The statutory right is subject to flexible case management. The defendant should identify the case advanced to rebut the presumption, while the prosecution may call rebuttal evidence or postpone that decision until after the defence case. There are no hard and fast rules about the evidence or its order. In this case, the absence of formal case management did not itself cause unfairness or ambush.
3. The Recorder’s directions were nevertheless seriously defective. The written direction treated the previous convictions as a given and omitted the appellant’s challenge to the underlying facts. The summing-up stated that the jury had to apply those directions and effectively confined the issue to whether the convictions showed a tendency to behave as alleged at the retrial. This withdrew from the jury the question whether the appellant had proved that he had not committed the earlier offences.
4. The case differed materially from the usual situation involving different victims. Here, the appellant and V gave evidence about both the earlier and current allegations. The jury therefore had to assess their credibility for themselves. The direction effectively told the jury that V’s earlier evidence was true and reliable and that the appellant’s denial was false, placing him at a severe and unfair disadvantage. The safety conclusions reached in R v Carter and R v Obi [2024] EWCA Crim 805 arose on materially different facts and did not govern this case. The misdirection rendered the convictions unsafe.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): Appeal allowed and convictions on Counts 1–5 quashed: [2025] EWCA Crim 966.
• Crown Court at Harrow: At retrial on 23 September 2022, the appellant was convicted by a majority of five counts of indecency with a child. At the earlier trial, he had been acquitted of seven counts, convicted of two indecent assault counts, and the jury had been unable to reach verdicts on five counts.