In a judgment, he also said: “As it is, we do not consider that the judge’s comments about the waiver rendered the trial unfair or the verdict unsafe.
“This is because the judge was simply pointing out that the waiver did not reflect the reality of the relationship between Ms Carr-Gomm and Mr Xiao.”
He said Mr Justice Bright did misdirect the jury about the waiver, but only on it being potentially “decisive” if it were a civil trial instead of a criminal one.
However, Lord Justice Dingemans said that “a legally correct direction from the judge” would have “created more difficulties for Mr Xiao because it would have made plain that Mr Xiao was seeking to rely on a waiver that had no legal effect”.
He added: “For the detailed reasons set out above, we dismiss the appeal against conviction.”
The trial at Winchester Crown Court heard Carr-Gomm, who was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 1999, was “howling in pain” and “frothing at the mouth” as she became seriously ill before she died on the fourth day of the workshop.
Jurors were told she had sought alternatives to her insulin medication because of her vegetarianism and fear of needles.
The court heard she had provided a testimonial for Xiao, describing him as a “messenger sent by God” who was “starting a revolution to put the power back in the hands of the people to cure themselves and to change the whole system of health care”.
She joined the Paida Lajin workshop, which means “slap and stretch”, in October 2016, having attended another in Bulgaria a few months earlier where she also stopped her insulin medication and became seriously ill before recovering.
The court heard Xiao had said “well done” to Carr-Gomm after she told the participants in Wiltshire that she had stopped taking her insulin at the week-long retreat, and she again became seriously ill.
Xiao had been extradited from Australia for the trial into Carr-Gomm’s death.
He had previously been prosecuted there after a six-year-old boy also died when his parents withdrew his insulin medication after attending Xiao’s workshop in Sydney.
