An inadvertent failure by both prosecution and defence counsel to excise inadmissible material from a record of interview before it is placed before the jury does not constitute a 'serious departure from the prescribed processes for trial' where the failure is explicable as oversight in a busy trial, counsel otherwise conducted the case conscientiously, and the trial judge gave a curative direction. In such circumstances, the standard inevitability analysis applies and the appeal will be dismissed if conviction was inevitable on the properly admissible evidence. The combined oversight of prosecutor and defence counsel does not aggregate into a failure of process.
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