Meaning or Effect? Defence Statements, Fact-Finding and Appellate Restraint R v Perry (Fionnghuale Mary) [2025] UKSC 17

R v Perry (Fionnghuale Mary) [2025] UKSC 17 clarifies how defence statements are treated under the CPIA. The Supreme Court holds that allocation between law and fact turns on purpose: legal effect is for the judge; meaning - what the maker intended or an ordinary reader understood in context - is for the fact-finder. Because the defence statement was in evidence and the dispute concerned what the appellant meant, interpretation was a factual issue; the trial judge’s contextual reading of paragraph 4(n) was therefore an evaluative inference, not a point of legal construction. A 2018 search of Ms Perry’s home uncovered coded notes on cigarette papers. The Crown said they were a dissident-republican debrief liable to assist future terrorism; Perry accepted the handwriting but claimed she copied papers delivered anonymously and believed the information’s “currency had long since dissipated.” The judge rejected her account on several strands - inkage between adjacent sentences in paragraph 4(n), concealment and retention of the notes despite claimed uselessness, and the absence of comparable material - before convicting at first instance. Dismissing the appeal, the Supreme Court reaffirmed Tweed/Thain appellate restraint: primary credibility findings “can rarely be disturbed”; document-based inferences still attract weight; and absent misdirection or misuse of facts, intervention is unwarranted. It rejected confession-law analogies and confirmed that, while guilt must be proved beyond reasonable doubt, individual evidential steps need not each meet that standard. Practically, the decision urges precise, reason-giving drafting: if asserting that information was obsolete, give the “because” within the statement to forestall adverse credibility inferences.