To His Honour, The jury is still not in total agreeance.

– First formal vote was [redacted] for [redacted] against (Guilty)
– Second formal vote was [redacted] for [redacted] against

Thank you.

It was 4:30pm on a summer Monday afternoon in early 2014. Leslie Smith’s jury had been deliberating since 11am the previous Friday, with a generous break over the weekend. Asked if an 11:1 verdict would solve the impasse, the jury foreman said ‘[y]ou could probably give us about half an hour and we can [indistinct].’ It took them just eighteen minutes to return a majority verdict, so they were on their way home by 5pm.

In Smith v R [2015] HCA 27, the High Court considered whether the trial judge should have publicly divulged the full contents of the jury’s note before he allowed them to reach the verdict that started Smith’s five year sentence and ended a twenty-five year journey by the woman who said he had raped her.

A secret struggle

She said that she was calling from a public phone box and sounded distressed. She told [her boyfriend] that she had had to get out of [Leslie Smith]’s apartment. He could hear the sound of a motorbike in the background. Ms B told him that she would meet him in town.

It was 11:30pm on an autumn night in 1989 when his sixteen year old girlfriend called. He didn’t see her until the next morning. Afterwards, at Townsville’s casino, where he and Smith worked, Smith wanted to ‘explain’, but he said that there was no need. His girlfriend had told him not to be angry at Smith or to blame him. She was ‘fine’. Six months passed before she told him that Smith had dragged her onto his motorbike that night and raped her at his flat. He didn’t believe her. Nor did anyone else she told that year. It was another 18 years before she went to the police, aged 34.

Until recently, a case like this would never have come to trial.  Continue reading →