R v Christos PODARAS [2009] NSWDC 421

New South Wales District Court

CITATION: R v Christos PODARAS [2009] NSWDC 421

JUDGMENT DATE: 5 November 2009

JURISDICTION: District Court of New South Wales

JUDGMENT OF: Cogswell SC DCJ

DECISION: The application is dismissed.

CATCHWORDS: CRIMINAL LAW - trial - application to discharge jury based on reference by a police officer to an uncharged assault by inference involving the accused - irreparable prejudice? - direction given to jury effective enough to avoid any potential prejudice

CASES CITED: R v Cook [2004] NSWCCA 52

PARTIES: Regina Christos Podaras

FILE NUMBER(S): 2008/14226

COUNSEL: Ms S Herbert Mr JP Watts

SOLICITORS: Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions NSW Catherine Hunter Solicitor

JUDGMENT

1. In this trial the accused, Mr Podaras, is facing a number of charges including kidnapping. His defence is that he was not present at the time of the kidnapping of the victim. The kidnapping on the Crown case occurred at the hands of three persons, one of whom the Crown says was the accused.

2. The Crown tendered CCTV footage of the accused earlier on the same day at a hotel. The same footage showed two other persons who, the Crown says, were the other two kidnappers. Mr Podaras denies that he was in the company of those two persons earlier in the day.

3. One of the last witnesses called by the Crown in its case was a police officer. The officer was asked questions by the Crown Prosecutor about obtaining the CCTV footage. She said that the footage was obtained by asking the proprietor of the hotel for CCTV images regarding an assault at the hotel that afternoon.

4. I am told from the bar table that there was in fact an assault at the hotel that afternoon. The Crown says the assault involved the accused attacking someone who, he thought, had insulted one of the other two kidnappers in his company. Mr Watts, who appears for Mr Podaras, applied to discharge the jury once the police officer made reference to the assault in the context of the CCTV footage of the hotel that afternoon.