"It is probably helpful, members of the jury, that we read the next direction, 'The good character of the defendant.' You have heard that the defendant has no previous convictions of any kind. Take into account also the character references called and read on his behalf. I am going to remind you of them now."
"You will remember I said there were three character witnesses that were read."
"Have I a reasonable doubt, or perhaps even a lurking doubt, that this conviction may be unsafe or unsatisfactory?"
"The responsibility for deciding whether fresh material renders a conviction unsafe is laid inescapably on this court, which must make up its own mind. Of course it must consider the nature of the issue before the jury and such information as it can gather as to the reasoning process through which the jury will have been passing. It is likely to ask itself by way of check what impact the fresh material might have had on the jury."
"... the ultimate question is whether the ... fresh evidence relied on in this appeal causes us to doubt the safety of the conviction."
"I am not persuaded that the House laid down any incorrect principle in Stafford, so long as the Court of Appeal bears very clearly in mind that the question for its consideration is whether the conviction is safe and not whether the accused is guilty."
"The task of the trial judge in summing up is to present the law and a summary of the evidence in such a way as best to enable the jury to reach a just conclusion. That can be achieved only if the trial judge communicates effectively to the jury the issues which they need to resolve and their legitimate approach to the evidence relevant to those issues."
"The sole statutory test for the Court of Appeal Criminal Division is now one of safety of the conviction. There can be no fixed rule or principle that a failure to give a good character direction or a misdirection is necessarily or usually fatal. It must depend on the facts of individual cases. It follows that all the decisions put before us in which convictions were quashed as a result of a misdirection were entirely fact specific. They provide no guidance at all."
"She recalls that the car was broken into, that the window was smashed, but that is something that she said she was told by Darryl. She says, 'I believe that was before we met and it was in the newspaper.' 'Did he ever have use of a car?' 'Yes, sometimes his brother's car that would be shared between his brother and the girlfriend, and when they didn't use it he was able to use it, otherwise he would pick me up on public transport.'"