R v Goncalves 2025
G worked as an advocate in Portugal but did not have any legal qualifications to practice within the UK. G met B and his daughter and falsely put herself forward as a barrister practising in this country and claimed she could advice B’s daughter on divorce proceedings. G claimed that she could advise B’s daughter as to urgent steps which it was necessary for her to take in order to protect her interest in her matrimonial home and to prevent her children having to visit their father in prison. B paid G £14,340. He later paid a further £6,550, but stopped that payment when he received information that contradicted G’s claims.
Whilst on police bail for this offence, G obtained £3,800 from K. K was employed as a care worker and G was her manager. A client had made an allegation of theft against K and following an investigation conducted by G, K was allowed to resume her work. The prosecution case was that G then falsely informed K that the police were going to arrest her and her children would be taken into care. G told K that her money would be seized, and she should transfer all her money to her to stop this. G stated that she could be trusted to return the money as she was a barrister.
During the trial, the defence submitted that G was entitled to a good character direction. There was doubt about that because even though the PNC record of G showed that she had no previous convictions, there was another file which contained information relating to the previous conviction for deception in Portugal of a woman with G’s name and date of birth with a photo attached – G denied this was her record. It was common ground that the Portuguese documents available to the prosecution at the time of the trial did not meet the criteria of admissibility under section 7 of the evidence Act 1851.
The judge initially indicated that he would be troubled giving a good character direction and Counsel made further submissions on which the judge gave a short ruling in which he said that, whether or not there was admissible evidence of the deception conviction, it would be misleading to give the jury a good character direction. He ruled that G should not be asked about her character. He declined to hear evidence from G on a voir dire. The defence made further submissions and invited the judge to reconsider his decision but the judge gave a further ruling that he was not prepared to give a good character direction as his view was that this would mislead the jury because he thought the photo attached to the record looked very much like G and so there was a powerful suggestion that G was convicted of deception in Portugal. It was asserted that the judge warned that G must not say in evidence that she was of good character, and if she did, she must expect cross -examination.
G convicted of two offences of fraud.
G appealed against her convictions on the following grounds:
- G should have been given the benefit of a full good character direction in the absence of any admissible evidence of bad character.
- The judge compounded the unfairness caused by that erroneous ruling by further ruling, exceeding his jurisdiction, that G was forbidden from giving evidence about her own character, if she so wished.
Held
Appeal dismissed. Convictions upheld.
The judge was entitled to decline to give a full good character direction. In the unusual circumstances of this case, the judge had information from the Portuguese authorities which, although not then in admissible form, pointed very clearly to a previous conviction of G which would make such a direction to the jury misleading. He was also entitled to conclude that any form of modified direction would either itself be misleading, or would be so qualified (for example, by referring to G having no previous convictions "in this country") as to invite speculation which could well be prejudicial to G.
The judge erred when making the decision that G was unable to give evidence as to her own character as they are not entitled to prohibit this. However, should G have given evidence of her good character, the prosecution would have been entitled to cross-examine her in relation to the information received from the Portuguese authorities. If this was denied by G, the prosecution would have been entitled to adduce this as hearsay evidence in order to correct a false impression under section 101(1)(f) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, or in the interests of justice under section 114(1)(d) of the Act , or as business records under section 117. It would have been likely that the jury would have been satisfied that G had been convicted of deception which would have supported the prosecution's case. Therefore, G would have been in a worse position than if she had not asserted her good character. Due to this, the convictions remained safe despite the judge erring in his decision.
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