Ratten v The Queen

July 1. LORD REID announced that the appeal would be dismissed for reasons to be given later.

October 11. The reasons for their Lordships' decision were delivered by LORD WILBERFORCE.

The appellant was convicted, on August 20, 1970, after a trial before Winneke C.J. and a jury, of the murder of his wife. His application to the Full Court of the Supreme Court of Victoria for leave to appeal was dismissed on September 16, 1970. By special leave he now appeals to the Board.

The appellant lived with his wife, the deceased, and three young children, in Echuca, a small country town in the State of Victoria. The deceased was eight months pregnant. The appellant, for over a year, had been carring on a liaison with another woman and it was suggested by the prosecution, though not admitted by the appellant, that his relations with her had reached a critical state.

The death of the deceased took place in the kitchen of her house on May 7, 1970, as the result of a gunshot wound. The evidence established the times of certain events as follows:

(i) At 1.09 p.m., the appellant's father S. R. Ratten telephoned to the appellant from Melbourne; the call was a trunk call and so was timed and the time recorded. It lasted 2.9 minutes. The conversation was perfectly normal: Mr. S. R. Ratten heard the voice of the deceased woman in the background apparently making comments of a normal character.

(ii) At about 1.15 p.m. a telephone call was made from the house and answered at the local exchange. The facts regarding this call are critical and will be examined later.

(iii) At about 1.20 p.m. a police officer, calling from the local police station, telephoned the appellant's house and spoke to the appellant. By this time the appellant's wife had been shot. Thus the shooting of the deceased, from which she died almost immediately, must have taken place between 1.12 p.m. and about 1.20 p.m.

The death of the deceased was caused by a wound from a shotgun held by the appellant. The appellant's account was that the discharge was accidental and occurred while he was cleaning his gun. There were in the kitchen, when the police arrived soon after the shooting, two double barrelled shotguns and a rifle, with cleaning materials. The gun from which the shot was fired was an old one, not normally used by the appellant, which had been sent in February/March 1970 to a gunsmith for examination. It was returned unloaded and placed in the appellant's garage where it remained until brought into the kitchen on May 7, 1970. The appellant was unable to explain how it came to be loaded. It was in fact found by the police to have been loaded in each of its two barrels and both barrels had been fired. The right barrel had misfired, but there was an imprint of the firing pin on the cartridge. The left barrel was discharged. The appellant was thoroughly experienced in the use of firearms.

It is clear that on the facts summarised above there was a prima facie case against the appellant, and the case against him would depend on whether the prosecution could satisfy the jury, on this circumstantial evidence, that the killing was deliberate or whether the jury would accept his account of an accident.

It was relevant and important to enquire what was the action of the appellant immediately after the shooting. His evidence, which he first gave in a signed statement to the police on May 8, 1970, was that he immediately telephoned for an ambulance and that shortly afterwards the police...