Court of Appeal judge says rapist’s lies to police “dug for himself a big hole”

A rapist who tried to have his conviction overturned due to an alleged lie has been described by the Court of Appeal as having “dug for himself a big hole”.

A rapist who tried to have his conviction overturned due to an alleged lie has been described by the Court of Appeal as having “dug for himself a big hole”.

A rapist who tried to have his conviction overturned due to an alleged lie has been described by the Court of Appeal as having "dug for himself a big hole".

Andrew Thomas Coyne was found guilty by a jury in Rockhampton District Court in February 2020 of raping a woman in a room at The Criterion Hotel in June 2018.

His victim had been sleeping next to her boyfriend in the Rockhampton motel room and Coyne had been invited inside the room earlier that night as they drank with mutual friends, but Coyne passed out in a chair.

Coyne and the woman were not known to each other and had met through friends.

About 4am the woman's boyfriend took a shower to aid his insomnia issues, leaving his girlfriend in a deep sleep in a single bed in the room.

This is when Andrew Thomas Coyne, 26, took the opportunity to rape the young woman until she woke up and pushed him off her.

The racehorse breaker and Bowen Basin miner was jailed for six years with parole eligibility on February 23, 2023.

Coyne appealed his conviction saying there was a miscarriage of justice when the presiding Judge, Michael Burnett, failed to "precisely identify the lies (and the circumstances or events relied on to show that they were admissions) which were relied on by the prosecution as told out of a consciousness of guilt".

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In the Court of Appeal decision handed down on May 18, Justice Hugh Fraser noted the police conducted the first of two interviews with Coyne at 6pm the day of the rape, where Coyne told police he remembered falling asleep in a recliner and must have got up at some point and got into the bed.

Coyne told police he did not know who else was in the room when he got into the bed and that the next thing he recalled was being woken up and accused of raping a lady.

Coyne admitted he was fairly intoxicated, but claimed he wouldn't have raped someone.

After the interview, Coyne consented to giving DNA which ended up matching swabs taken from the victim's cervix.

Three days after the first interview, Coyne attended the police station saying he "just wanted to come in and clarify a few things", that he had "time to actually be able to remember" and he wanted "to clear it all up".

Coyne then told police he had been woken up by the victim after he climbed into the bed and they "made out" and "I remember putting her leg over me" and "she proceeded to rub my crotch".

Coyne claimed the victim unzipped his pants and she rolled with Coyne ending up on top.

He claimed he was unsure if he had penetrated the victim.

The victim told the jury Coyne had fallen asleep on the floor and she and her boyfriend had slept in the bed.

She woke up on her back with her knees pulled up so they were close to her chest and legs bent.

She felt a weight on top of her and she was being penetrated.

She put her hands up and realised the man on top of her was not her boyfriend, pushed the man off and ran to the hotel room door to allow light into the room.

The bathroom light was on and she realised her boyfriend was in the shower, so she went to him and screamed "he raped me".

Her boyfriend told the jury she was hysterical and he saw Coyne lying on the bed.

The boyfriend went to another motel room to wake up his sister, crying and screaming "he raped her".

The sister told the court she ran to the room and saw Coyne lying face down on the bed.

The sister found the victim had run out to the front of the hotel, was distraught, screaming and crying as well as rocking backwards and forwards.

The victim said she didn't want to be touched and felt disgusting.

Justice Fraser said Coyne's arguments in the appeal were concerned with what crown prosecutor Will Slack submitted were lies told in the second police interview and Coyne did not complain Judge Burnett's directions about the alleged lie were inappropriate or insufficient.

"Although the prosecutor did not submit in terms that the lies allegedly told in the second police interview were told out of a consciousness of guilt, up to this point in the address, the jury might reasonable have understood that to be the effect of the prosecutor's submissions about those lies," he said.

"If the prosecutor's immediate following submissions were disregarded, the trial judge should have made directions about the lies in the second police interview.

"In the immediately following submissions, however, after the prosecutor argued that (Coyne) did not have an honest and reasonable mistaken belief that (Coyne) was consenting to sex, the prosecutor returned to the topic of the alleged lies.

"The effect of the prosecutor's submissions about the significance of the alleged lies in the second police interview was that, if the jury concluded (Coyne) had lied in his police interviews, they should put the police interviews aside and scrutinise the evidence in the Crown case to decide whether the prosecution had proved (Coyne's) guilt beyond a reasonable doubt."

Coyne's lawyer, Doug Winning, referred to fear and embarrassment as reasons for telling lies and to statements by Coyne that he had not slept since he had left the room early in the morning and he had been seriously affected by alcohol.

Mr Winning also said the account given by Coyne in the second interview was not implausible.

Justice Fraser said with the way the jury was directed in how to review the evidence, there was no reasonable possibility the jury used the alleged lies in the second police interview to the disadvantage of Coyne.

Justice David North said having read the reasons given by Justice Fraser, he concluded Coyne had "dug for himself a big hole" by "uttering what was submitted a lie in the first interview", made worse by his telling police he was happy with what he had told them.

"The jury might well have thought what he said at the second interview three days later was a desperate attempt to dig himself out of that hole," he said.

Coyne's appeal was unsuccessful.

Originally published as Court of Appeal judge says rapist’s lies to police “dug for himself a big hole”