Can post-event demeanour evidence assist the prosecution in a sexual assault case?

Ontario, Canada


The following excerpt is from R. v. Rose, 2021 ONCA 408 (CanLII):

In Murphy v. The Queen, 1976 CanLII 198 (SCC), [1977] 2 S.C.R. 603, at pp. 612, Spence J. writing for the majority and the unanimous court on this point, explained how post-event demeanour evidence can assist the prosecution: Independent testimony of a rape complainant’s emotional condition is capable at law of corroboration where it is sufficiently damning that it may be considered by a jury to be more consistent with her denial of consent than with the existence of consent, or, to put it another way, where a reasonable inference can be drawn by a jury, considering all the circumstances, that there is a causal relationship between the assault and the complainant’s distraught emotional condition.

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