SA Court of Appeal quashes conviction over the ‘rule against narrative’

In McClelland v The King [2025] SASCA 87, the South Australian Court of Appeal has overturned a rape conviction after finding a failure to direct the jury on an out-of-court statement left ‘obvious risks’ that the jury would ‘misuse the conversation’, to either bolster the complainant’s credibility (the ‘bolster rule’) or as evidence of uncharged acts.