An alleged lie told by an accused in a police interview cannot be left to the jury as evidence of consciousness of guilt where the untruth is plausibly explained by the accused's intoxication and the passage of time between the events and the interview. Where a trial judge directs on the defence of mistake as to consent under s 24 of the Criminal Code (Qld), the jury must be told that intoxication is relevant to whether the accused honestly held a mistaken belief, even though it is irrelevant to whether the belief was reasonable. Unequivocal directions that intoxication is not a defence, given in the context of s 23, may compound the error if the jury is not separately directed on the role of intoxication in s 24.
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