The Queensland Court of Appeal allowed the appeal against conviction and ordered a new trial on multiple grounds: the Crown Prosecutor's failure to call a particular witness, improper use of the appellant's evidence as a lie said to demonstrate consciousness of guilt, and deficiencies in the summing-up that risked suggesting an onus on the accused. The Court considered the inapplicability of Jones v Dunkel reasoning in criminal proceedings and the requirements for an Edwards direction (Edwards v The Queen (1993) 178 CLR 193), reinforcing that the Crown must not exploit the absence of evidence it chose not to call and that judicial directions must not effectively reverse the burden of proof.
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