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Court of Criminal Appeal 19 December 2025

Watts v R

[2025] NSWCCA 233

Assault & violenceTheft & property
CRIME APPEALS APPEAL AGAINST CONVICTION ROBBERY JURY VERDICT UNREASONABLE

Citation: Watts v R [2025] NSWCCA 233
Court: Court of Criminal Appeal, New South Wales
Date: 19 December 2025
Judges: Harrison CJ at CL; Lonergan J; McGuire J

Background

The appellant was convicted by a District Court jury in May 2024 of robbing a wheelchair-bound man in Redfern on 11 January 2022. The Crown alleged he had pushed the complainant's wheelchair along Chalmers Street and through Redfern Park before stealing a shoulder bag containing cash, a mobile phone, keys, and a pension card. The appellant did not deny appearing in the CCTV footage pushing the wheelchair, but maintained that another man took over pushing the complainant at the end of Redfern Park, while he walked home.

The complainant told police on the day of the robbery that he knew his assailant, that the man's name was "Wayne," and that they had talked about old times before Wayne pushed him into a side street and stole his bag. Six weeks later, the complainant identified a different man in a photo identification procedure. He never identified the appellant as the person who robbed him.

The Crown's case at trial rested on the proposition that only one man pushed the wheelchair throughout, and that the same man committed the robbery. The appellant sought leave to appeal his conviction on the sole ground that the jury's verdict was unreasonable having regard to the nature and quality of the evidence.

  • Whether the jury's verdict of guilty was unreasonable having regard to the nature and quality of the evidence, specifically the reliability of the complainant's identification evidence.
  • Whether the problems with the complainant's evidence were of a kind that a jury's advantage in seeing and hearing witnesses could explain away, or whether they arose from the content and inconsistencies of the evidence itself.

Decision

The Court of Criminal Appeal unanimously allowed the appeal and quashed the conviction, ordering an acquittal. The orders were made on 20 August 2025, immediately after oral submissions, with formal reasons published on 19 December 2025.

Lonergan J, with whom Harrison CJ at CL and McGuire J agreed, conducted an independent assessment of the evidence as to both sufficiency and quality. The complainant had given multiple, adamant, and irreconcilable identifications of his assailant to police officers, triple-0 responders, and the jury, including a firm assertion on the day itself that the robber was a man named "Wayne" whom he knew. He never identified the appellant. Objective evidence, including CCTV footage showing the timing of the appellant's interactions with the complainant and the time the appellant arrived home, also failed to support key aspects of the complainant's account.

Lonergan J concluded that a rational jury ought to have entertained a reasonable doubt as to the appellant's guilt. Critically, the problems with the evidence were not about the manner in which it was delivered at trial, but about the content of the evidence itself: its internal inconsistencies and inadequacies that persisted throughout the proceedings. Those problems were therefore not capable of being resolved by reliance on the jury's advantage of having observed witnesses firsthand.

Harrison CJ at CL added a pointed observation about prosecutorial conduct, noting that where the evidence underlying a conviction is so unsatisfactory that a successful appeal is near inevitable, it is not a proper exercise of the prosecutor's role to stubbornly resist the appeal or construct strained arguments in support of an indefensible verdict.

Orders Made

  • Leave to appeal granted.
  • Appeal allowed.
  • Conviction quashed.
  • Acquittal entered.

Key Takeaways

  • A jury verdict may be set aside as unreasonable where the evidence, assessed independently by the appellate court, contains discrepancies, displays inadequacies, is tainted, or otherwise lacks probative force such that there is a significant possibility an innocent person has been convicted.
  • Where the problems with evidence lie in its content and inherent inconsistencies rather than in the credibility or demeanour of witnesses, the jury's advantage in observing witnesses give their evidence does not insulate the verdict from appellate intervention.
  • An appellate court is not required to accept a complainant's evidence merely because the jury assessed that person as credible; the court must conduct its own independent assessment of the evidence on the record.
  • The Court of Criminal Appeal affirmed that a complainant who gives multiple irreconcilable identifications and who never identifies the accused cannot provide a reliable foundation for conviction, particularly where objective evidence fails to corroborate the Crown's theory.
  • Harrison CJ at CL observed that prosecutors have no proper role in stubbornly defending a manifestly unreasonable verdict or advancing strained arguments to support a conviction that should not have been maintained on appeal.

Legislation and Cases Referenced

Legislation:
- Crimes Act 1900 (NSW), s 94(a) (robbery)

Cases:
- M v The Queen (1994) 181 CLR 487; [1994] HCA 63
- SKA v The Queen (2011) 243 CLR 400; [2011] HCA 13
- Pell v The Queen (2020) 268 CLR 123; [2020] HCA 12
- Z (a pseudonym) v R [2022] NSWCCA 8
- Dansie v The Queen (2022) 274 CLR 651; [2022] HCA 25
- The Queen v Baden-Clay (2016) 258 CLR 308; [2016] HCA 35
- ND v R [2017] NSWCCA 70
- Barney v R [2023] NSWCCA 85
- HO v R [2023] NSWCCA 245
- Lee v R [2023] NSWCCA 203; (2023) 310 A Crim R 170
- Davis v R [2024] NSWCCA 120
- JL v R [2024] NSWCCA 246
- Singh v R [2025] NSWCCA 34
- Coleman v R [2025] NSWCCA 99
- The King v ZT (2025) 281 CLR 137; [2025] HCA 9