202400687 B2 - [2025] EWCA Crim 966

The appellant in Carter faced a number of charges alleging dishonesty in the making of insurance claims relating to a car repair business. He had previously pleaded guilty to four other indictments charging similar offences. He gave evidence, however, that he had not committed those offences and had pleaded guilty to them in the hope of protecting his brother. The trial judge directed the jury that the convictions were conclusive evidence of the appellant’s guilt so far as those offences were concerned. When the terms of section 74(3) were pointed out to him, he ruled that in order to rebut the presumption of guilt, a defendant must adduce evidence other than or in addition to his own bald assertion that he did not commit the offences. That was held to be a misdirection. Hughes LJ said:

“‘In that ruling, we are satisfied, and indeed the Crown concedes, that the judge remained in the error which he had previously adopted. There is no warrant in the statute for the proposition that evidence to rebut the presumption created by conviction must be of any particular kind. There is no warrant for the proposition that as a matter of law the defendant’s own assertion cannot ever rebut the presumption. The correct position was that the decision whether the defendant had proved the contrary in accordance with subsection (3) of section 74 was a question not of law for the judge but of fact for the jury and it should have been left to the jury. That said, it is quite apparent that, had it been left to the jury in the way that it should have been, the judge would have been entitled, and on the facts of this case virtually bound, to offer the jury strong comment about the limited nature of the evidence that the defendant had put forward.”