The Court of Appeal held that where post-offence conduct (pouring accelerant on a car bonnet) has no plausible explanation other than consciousness of guilt, an [name withheld]-type direction is not required and the evidence is admissible as an implied admission — the Court rejected the State's own concession on this point. However, the Court found a miscarriage of justice where the prosecutor's 'consistency' submission in closing effectively invited the jury to treat the accused's denials to neighbours as implied admissions of guilt through impermissible circular reasoning, as the denials could only be proved false by accepting the complainant's direct evidence, and the trial judge compounded this by characterising the denials as part of the circumstantial case supporting the complainant's account. On the sentence appeal, the Court held that the offence of setting an estranged wife alight with accelerant causing 38% burns fell just below the worst category but that 11 years' imprisonment was manifestly inadequate, resentencing to 15 years.
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