21 T H E   E F F E C T   O F   A N   A C Q U I T TA L   O N   S U B S E Q U E N T   P R O C E E D I N G S 60 DPP v Humphrys, above n 53, 41. 61 R v Z [2000] 3 WLR 117 (HL) [R v Z (HL)]. 62 R  v  Z  [2000]  Crim  LR  293  (CA)  (Transcript:  Smith  Bernal)  [R  v  Z  (CA)  Smith  Bernal Transcript] 63 Standing by itself the evidence in the case on which he had been convicted was not enough to satisfy the test for admission of similar fact evidence. from also adducing the same evidence as before, “or asserting its truth”, merely because it was inconsistent with innocence on the earlier charge.⁶⁰ 90 Neither of these conclusions is consistent with the Crown’s having to accept that the defendant must be taken to be innocent of the previous charge because of the acquittal. Moreover, they are conclusions arrived at in a case where it had not been strictly necessary for the Crown to rely on the previously rejected evidence,  for  the  Crown  had  “fresh  evidence”  suggesting  the  falsity  of  the defendant’s  evidence  when  he  went  beyond  denying  the  particular  offence charged.  When  for  practical  purposes  it  is  necessary  for  the  Crown  to  prove guilt of the original offence in order to prove guilt of perjury in denying it, we think it is even clearer that it would be wrong to insist that the perjury charge must be determined on an artificial (and, indeed, incoherent) assumption of innocence of the original offence. A RATIONALISATION OF THE COMMON LAW 91 On 22 June 2000, in R v Z,⁶¹ the House of Lords finally distanced itself from Sambasivam. 92 The English Court of Appeal had rejected a Crown interlocutory appeal against a  decision  at  the  preparatory  hearing  of  a  rape  case  to  exclude  similar  fact evidence.⁶² There had been four previous occasions on which the accused was alleged  to  have  committed  rape,  each  involving  a  separate  complainant,  in circumstances that satisfied the test as to close similarity. The defendant had been tried separately in relation to each episode. On one occasion he had been convicted; on three he had been acquitted. The Crown sought to invite the jury to infer that, despite the previous acquittals, the accused had in fact been guilty on each occasion.⁶³ 93 The Court of Appeal accepted the Crown’s submissions: • that the acquittals established no more than that the jury were not sure of guilt; • that similar fact evidence may have an evidential force not possessed by the facts of any one case alone. 94 It observed: There can, therefore, be no incongruity in allowing a jury in a later case to look back  at  earlier  incidents,  even  if  they  have  when  viewed  individually  led  to acquittals. The jury’s verdict will be confined to the later case. If the jury can observe a previously unidentified pattern, which assists it to a result different from that to which it might otherwise have come, the ends of justice will simply have been served in respect of the later case. In our view this submission is in legal logic unanswerable. The  only  argument  in  an  opposite  sense  is  that,  for  reasons  of  policy  and  public expectation, the prior acquittals should be given an additional significance and value outweighing the public interest in a correct verdict on all the available evidence in the later case.