Karunaratne v. Attorney-General – sllr 2007 volume 1 page 255

In KARUNARATNE v ATTORNEY-GENERAL, the appellant, Kammalpitiya Gethara Karunaratne, was convicted for the murder of Jayasinghe Arachchilage Somapala. The central issues considered were the alleged misattribution of the deceased’s bad character to the accused, the adequacy of circumstantial evidence for establishing guilt beyond reasonable doubt, and the correct invocation of the “Ellenborough dictum” relating to prima facie evidence. The case examined whether reference to the deceased’s character constituted a legal error and if the circumstantial evidence sufficed to uphold the conviction. The court upheld the conviction and dismissed the appeal, reaffirming that references to bad character are not prohibited by law and that the circumstantial evidence, including witness accounts and phys