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Allegations of Sexual
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Acquittal on some
charges in a pack rape trial showed the victim's story was not entirely
believed and four men jailed over the 1989 incident at Mt Maunganui should be
retried, the Court of Appeal was told yesterday. Mt Maunganui
businessman Peter McNamara, Papamoa fireman Warren Hales and two men whose
identities remain suppressed, were convicted last July of abducting and
raping the then 20-year-old woman. The unnamed men were
also convicted of unlawful sexual connection and one was found guilty of a
second rape. Both were acquitted of sexual violation with an object, the
details of which are also suppressed. McNamara's lawyer,
Bruce Squires, QC, said the Crown's case had relied solely on the now
37-year-old woman's testimony. "The very same
issues the jury must have considered, and which persuaded them to convict on
some counts, had the opposite effect on the counts they acquitted on,"
he told the three-judge bench. "If there is a sense of unease about it,
that ought to be enough to overturn it." But Justice William
Young said it did not seem likely the jury picked and chose which evidence to
believe. "We are reluctant
to believe the jury got their verdicts by throwing darts at a board." The men have appealed
against conviction and all but Hales are appealing against their sentences,
which range from seven to 8 years. The trial focused on an
incident in a hut to where the woman claims she was lured on a lunchtime
date. She claims she was bound, raped, forced to perform oral sex and
brutally violated with an object. The men maintained it
was consensual group sex. |
