The Court discharged the jury in a murder trial after a witness volunteered evidence — not responsive to the question asked and not led by the Crown — that could be misused as an admission the accused did not act in self-defence. Dhanji J held that the proposed remedy of recalling the witness to contextualise the remark and providing a judicial direction did not sufficiently eliminate the risk of prejudice, particularly because the evidence went directly to one of only two contested issues (self-defence) and the jury could reason that the accused's stated reason for pessimism about self-defence was itself false, effectively converting the remark into an implied admission. The decision turned on the specific factual context, including that the accused had given a demonstrably false exculpatory account in the same conversation, which undermined the effectiveness of any curative direction.
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