BARBADOS-COURT-CCJ clarifies jury direction where a witness lies deliberately under oath.

The Trinidad-based Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) Monday dismissed an appeal that raised the question of whether the jury was misdirected by the trial judge on how to treat with a witness whom the jury considered may be deliberately lying on oath.

In the case James Fields against the state of Barbados, Fields argued that the jury must be directed on the premise that if the jury finds a witness to be deliberately lying on oath, then they must reject all of that witness' evidence because if they lied about one matter they would be capable of lying about another.

But the state disagreed arguing that the direction was proper and that issues of credibility and reliability of witnesses are issues for the jury alone.

On 23 July 2010, Fields was arrested and charged with the common law offence of murder. He was eventually found guilty of manslaughter and was sentenced by the trial judge to serve 16 years in prison. At the trial, an eyewitness to the incident gave evidence in support of the state's case.

During cross-examination, it was demonstrated that the eyewitness was untruthful in his testimony. In cross-examining the eyewitness, counsel suggested to him that it was he who had shot and killed the deceased, but this was stoutly denied by the eyewitness.

In his summing up, the trial judge directed the jury along the lines that if the jury found a particular witness for the prosecution to be 'lying', they could reject that particular detail of the evidence.

Further, the fact that they did not accept a portion of a witness' evidence did not mean that they must necessarily reject the whole of the witness' evidence if they thought that it was worthy of acceptance. Fields was convicted by the jury and subsequently appealed to the Court of Appeal.

The Court of Appeal interpreted the material part of the trial judge's summation as suggesting that when the judge referred to a witness who was 'lying

On this basis, the Court of Appeal did not find it necessary to cast doubt on the direction. The Court found instead that, having regard to all the circumstances, the verdict of the jury was neither unsafe nor unsatisfactory.

Furthermore, even if the direction, taken out of context, may amount to a material misdirection, no miscarriage of justice had occurred. The appeal against conviction was dismissed but the sentence was varied to 11 years.

Fields appealed his conviction to the CCJ on seven grounds. The CCJ allowed Fields to argue one ground, that is the...