KEY POINTS:
The Court of Appeal has quashed the conviction of a man found guilty of assaulting a child in an alleged smacking incident.
The conviction was entered in Auckland District Court in March last year following a short trial in front of a judge alone.
The Crown said the child had received the injuries while in the sole care of the appellant, Julian Bradley Peel Molony, who was the partner of the child's mother.
The case was based around an incident in January 2007 when the young boy received grazes on his body and bruising on his buttocks.
Molony admitted to smacking the child lightly after he had used a chair to open a door and go outside on to some steps.
He claimed that when he saw what was happening he called out and the child lost his balance and fell down the steps.
Molony said he had smacked the child's bottom to discipline him for going outside without permission and sent him to the "naughty chair".
The boy's mother said she later examined the child and found some scrapes and red patches on his body, before discovering some bruising while changing his nappy the next morning.
When she later delivered the child to his father, who shared custody, she told him he had fallen and that she had taken him to a doctor.
The father checked and found the child had not seen a doctor as his mother had claimed.
He took the boy to a doctor himself and her evidence later presented in court outlined bruising on his buttocks likely to have been caused by blunt force trauma such as being hit with a hand or object.
The judge ruled that the force used was in excess of that reasonably required for the purposes of correction.
The appeal outlined the fact that the defence had suggested the boy's mother could have in fact inflicted the injuries at an earlier date - something that was plausible as she had been dishonest in the past.
The appeal court said proper consideration had not been given to the fact that the mother could have been responsible and the injuries inflicted at a different time or place than that outlined in court.
"We consider the evidence the judge heard did not permit him to exclude the reasonable doubts and possibilities we have outlined," the Court of Appeal ruled.
"The result is that the judge's finding that the charge was proved beyond reasonable doubt is unreasonable and cannot stand."
The appeal was allowed and the appellant's conviction quashed.
A retrial was considered inappropriate.
- NZPA
