Background
Following a four-day District Court trial at Southport, CEF was charged with five counts of rape alleged to have occurred during the night of 21–22 April 2024. The complainant said that, after drinking at CEF’s home while her friend MG had passed out, CEF committed several non-consensual sexual acts. She described freezing during the first two acts, physically covering herself and shaking her head before a later act, and said CEF subsequently ejaculated into her mouth.
CEF accepted that the conduct alleged in counts 1 to 4 occurred, but maintained it was consensual. He denied the digital penetration alleged in count 5. The jury acquitted him on counts 1, 2 and 5, could not agree on count 3, and convicted him by majority verdict on count 4. He received two years’ imprisonment, wholly suspended for two years. His sole appeal ground was that the count 4 conviction was inconsistent with the acquittals.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal. Applying the test in MacKenzie v The Queen, it held that appellate intervention is warranted only where the differing verdicts are an unacceptable affront to logic and common sense. A jury may accept a complainant’s evidence in one respect while retaining a reasonable doubt about other alleged acts, particularly where the evidence and issues differ between counts.
There was a rational basis for the verdicts here. On the complainant’s account, she did not move, react or say no during counts 1 and 2; the jury could therefore have retained a reasonable doubt as to whether CEF had an honest and reasonable but mistaken belief in consent for those counts. By contrast, her evidence on the events leading to counts 3 and 4 was that she covered her genitals and shook her head to indicate no. The jury could reject CEF’s account of consent and find that the Crown had excluded mistake of fact for count 4. Count 5 was temporally separate, was denied by CEF, and lacked preliminary-complaint evidence. The jury’s inability to agree on count 3 was not equivalent to an acquittal and carried little weight in the inconsistency analysis.
Key Takeaways
- Mixed verdicts do not establish inconsistency merely because the allegations arose in the same broader episode.
- The question is whether the verdicts can rationally be reconciled by reference to the evidence, issues and jury directions for each count.
- Different evidence concerning resistance, consent and mistake of fact can support acquittals on some counts and a conviction on another.
Why It Matters
The decision confirms the high threshold for overturning a conviction on the ground of inconsistent verdicts in Queensland. Courts will respect a jury’s duty to assess each count separately unless the result necessarily reveals compromise, confusion or a conclusion incompatible with logic and common sense.