Criminal Litigation

The defendant was charged with fraud involving cheques. At the trial, the jury were shown a number of cheques but there was no expert handwriting evidence that compared the defendant’s handwriting to the handwritten details on the cheques. The defendant denied any part in the fraud. After the jury had retired, they requested a sample of cheques which the defendant had allegedly written, the foreman of the jury indicating that they wanted to compare the handwriting on the cheques with samples of the defendant’s handwriting in other documents.

HELD For the jury to use the extraneous material provided after their retirement (i.e. the sample of further cheques) in order to compare handwriting so as to decide whether the appellant had written out the cheques in question necessarily meant using that extraneous material as evidence in an exercise that would enable the jury to reach their own conclusion in relation to the appellant’s evidence to the contrary. It was wholly impermissible for the jury to make use of the extraneous material for such an evidential exercise.