Deon Watson v The King (The Bahamas)

Inconsistent jury verdicts are not established merely because one possible route through the evidence would have produced matching convictions. The appellant must show that the verdicts cannot stand together, meaning that no reasonable jury properly applying the facts could have reached them.

A jury may reject a prosecution case based on joint venture and convict a defendant only of offences it is sure that he personally committed. Different verdicts on different counts can therefore stand together where the evidence supports that distinction. An appellate court assesses the issue by reference to the evidence and issues raised at trial. An issue not raised at trial cannot ordinarily support an allegation that the jury’s verdicts were irrational.

The appellant and another man were jointly tried in the Supreme Court at Nassau on six counts arising from an armed bank robbery. The appellant was acquitted of two armed robbery counts but convicted of three firearm offences and one count of damage.

The Court of Appeal of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas dismissed his appeal in a judgment dated 20 April 2020, recorded as SCCrApp No 255 of 2016. It accepted that the verdicts raised the possibility of inconsistency but applied the proviso to section 13(1) of the Court of Appeal Act.

The central issue before the Privy Council was whether the acquittals and convictions could rationally stand together. The appellant also relied on an issue concerning one firearm count and challenged the sufficiency of the judge’s directions on joint venture.

Appeal dismissed. The Board advised His Majesty that the appeal should be dismissed.

1. Applicable test. The Board applied the test formulated by Devlin J in R v Stone (unreported) 13 December, 1954. The appellant bears the burden of showing that the verdicts cannot stand together because no reasonable jury properly applying its mind to the facts could have reached them. The test was treated in R v Hunt [1968] 2 QB 433, R v Durante [1972] 1 WLR 1612 and R v Fanning [2016] EWCA Crim 550; [2016] 1 WLR 4175. Comparison with the circumstances of other cases was unnecessary and inappropriate.
2. Joint venture and personal liability. The judge was required to leave the issue of joint venture to the jury. The jury was entitled to reject the prosecution’s joint-venture case, rely on the admissible caution statement to establish the appellant’s presence, and rely on the bank witnesses’ evidence to determine which offences he personally committed. On that basis, the absence of evidence that he personally committed the first two robberies was consistent with his convictions for the firearm and damage offences.
3. Count 4. The argument that the appellant could not be guilty without knowing that the bank manager was in her office was raised for the first time before the Board and had not been analysed at trial, in the closing speeches or in the summing-up. It therefore could not show that the jury had failed rationally to examine the verdicts. If the issue had been raised at trial, further legal questions would have arisen.
4. Jury directions. Although this issue did not determine the appeal, the Board disagreed with the Court of Appeal’s suggested direction that the verdicts must be the same whether the appellant acted alone or in concert with another. That direction presupposed a joint venture and would be a misdirection. A jury could instead be directed conditionally on a finding that a joint venture existed.

1. Privy Council. In Deon Watson v The King (The Bahamas), [2025] UKPC 55, the appeal against conviction was dismissed.
2. Court of Appeal of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas. On 20 April 2020, in SCCrApp No 255 of 2016, the appeal was dismissed. The court applied the proviso to section 13(1) of the Court of Appeal Act.
3. Supreme Court at Nassau. Following a jury trial in 2016, the appellant was acquitted of two armed robbery counts and convicted of three firearm counts and one count of damage.