A cross-examination strategy that seeks to establish a complainant would not lie to her mother about important matters, in order to exploit a contradiction between the complainant's and her mother's evidence, is capable of rational forensic explanation even if it risks enhancing the complainant's credibility. The test for miscarriage of justice from counsel's conduct remains objective: whether the course taken is capable of explanation on the basis it could have led to a forensic advantage, not whether other counsel would have taken the same approach.
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