John Joseph O'Reilly
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE SALMON |
| Judgment Date | 11 April 1967 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1967] EWCA Crim J0411-2 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) |
| Docket Number | No. 4224/66 |
| Date | 11 April 1967 |
[1967] EWCA Crim J0411-2
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL
CRIMINAL DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Lord Justice Salmon
Mr. Justice Fenton Atkinson
and
Mr. Justice Brabin
No. 4224/66
MR. HOLLIS appeared on behalf of the appellant.
MR. LOWRY appeared on behalf of the Crown.
On the 18th November last year at Hertfordshire Sessions this appellant was convicted of attempted rape and sentenced to 30 months' imprisonment. He now appeals against conviction by leave of the single Judge.
The complaint made against the summing-up is that the learned Deputy Chairman did not warn the jury that it would be dangerous to convict without corroboration of the complainant's evidence.
The complainant, Mrs. Reid, was walking home on the evening of the 27th August of last year when at about 11.55 at night she was attacked by a man who carried her into an alleyway and there made a determined and brutal but unsuccessful attempt to rape her. She fought him off and he made a similar attempt a little later on. That was her evidence. A Mr. Lake was called, who said that he heard a woman scream, he ran to the place from where he had heard the screams coming and there he saw Mrs. Reid lying on the ground with a man on top of her molesting her with his hands round her throat. He said that at that particular spot the light was quite good.
A few days later the appellant was put on an identification parade and Mr. Lake picked him out as the man who had been attacking Mrs. Reid. Mrs. Reid was quite unable to identify him; but later in the Police Court and at the trial she said she recognized his voice and his face and that the appellant was the man.
The Police examined the clothes that were being worn by the appellant on the night in question and also Mrs. Reid's clothes. On the appellant's clothes were found strands of mohair and strands of blue nylon which were not part of the fabric of the clothing which he was wearing. They were strands of fiber found on those clothes. On Mrs. Reid's clothes there were found some viscous rayon fibers. All these different lots of fibers were sealed into separate packages by the Police and sent to the forensic science laboratory, Mr. Grieve from that laboratory examined the various fibers and gave evidence. He said that these fibers had been put under an exceptionally powerful microscope that magnified them 450 times. As for the viscous rayon fibers that were found on Mrs. Reid's clothes, these were identical, according to Mr. Grieve, with fibers of material from which the appellant's jacket was made. It was said on his behalf that this jacket is not a very special jacket and that there may have been other men wearing the same sort of jacket with the same sort of viscous rayon fibers. According, however, to Mr. Grieve, when they were blown up - as we have already said to 450 times their true size - the fibers were absolutely identical. This would have been impossible, according to Mr. Grieve, unless the fibers all came from the same garment or garments which had been made by the same machine, probably in the same batch.
The mohair fibers found on the appellant's clothes were identical with the mohair fibers from which Mrs. Reid's coat was made; and the blue nylon fibers found upon the appellant's shirt were identical with the blue nylon fibers of which Mrs. Reid's knickers were made.
The appellant said that his wife had a mohair skirt; but when his wife was called she denied that her skirt was made of mohair and said it was a cotton mix. Mr. Grieve said that although it was impossible to be certain without examining the skirt under a microscope in his view it was, as Mrs. O'Reilly said, a cotton skirt. The appellant said that the blue nylon fibers could have, and did, come from his wife's underclothes. But Mrs. O'Reilly when she gave evidence admitted that she had no blue nylon knickers and that her underclothing was all made either of black nylon or white cotton.
In the course of his summing-up, to which I shall allude again in a moment, the learned Deputy Chairman told the jury that if the case had stopped at the direct evidence of Mrs. Reid and Mr. Lake, to which I have already referred, he would have...
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Julian David Malcolm Reid Patrick John Appellants v The State [ECSC]
...they may convict on his evidence, it is dangerous to do so unless it is corroborated. But as Salmon L.J. stated in John O'Reilly v R (1967) 51 Cr. App. R 345 at 349, "the rule that the jury must be warned does not mean that there has to be some legalistic ritual to be automatically recited ......
- R v Russell
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The Queen v Rennie Gilbert
...suspicion, thus undermining the judge's purpose. Directions on corroboration are particularly subject to this danger: see Reg v O'Reilly [1967] 2 QB 722, 727, per Salmon L.J." They adopted what had been said by Barwick CJ in the High Court of Australia in Kelleher v The Queen (1974) 131 CL......
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R v Spencer
...approved the decision in Stannard and in giving the judgment of the Court Lord Justice Diplock adopted the words of Lord Justice Salmon in O'Reilly (1967) 51 Cr. App. R. 345, to this effect at page 349: "But the rule that the jury must be warned does not mean that there has to be some legal......