R v Ali

The Queensland Court of Appeal upheld convictions for murder and improperly interfering with a corpse where the Crown case was entirely circumstantial, based on evidence including the appellant's knowledge, skill and equipment to carry out dismemberment of a newborn baby, and his presence near the burial site. The Court held that the trial judge did not err in categorising the appellant's lies into four main groups rather than particularising each individual lie, and that the Edwards v R lies direction was correctly given where the possibility that lies were told through consciousness of guilt of a lesser offence was left open to the jury. The Court distinguished R v May, R v M and R v R on the basis that in this case the trial judge had appropriately left the interpretation of the lies to the jury.