[2013] NICA 6

Where a complaint of a single count of indecent assault on a female child on a date unknown in a two-year period was made some five years after the time of the alleged offence, a trial judge's direction to the jury on the question of delay failed to give the jury a sufficiently clear direction on the general prejudice faced by the accused because of the delay. Moreover, it did not bring clearly enough to the jury's attention the prejudice created to the accused by the wide timeframe of the allegation which provided no meaningful temporal context within which the alleged event was alleged to have occurred.

CA (NI) (Morgan LCJ, Higgins LJ, Girvan LJ)

23/01/2013