A man who was found guilty of sexually assaulting a woman in an attack near Connaught Hill has lost his bid for an acquittal or a new trial.
William Garfield Garnot had appealed the outcome, reached in 2011 by B.C. Supreme Court Justice Terence Schultes, on the basis that the results of a doctor's examination of the victim after the attack had been inadvertently thrown out before the case had been taken to trial.
However, no evidence connecting Garnot to the woman had been found by the doctor. Instead, DNA from her jeans was later matched to Garnot, a fact admitted by defence counsel during the trial.
The lost evidence raised concerns for the judge about whether Garnot's Charter rights had been violated and whether the case was substantially affected. But in the end, he concluded that "even giving the loss of this evidence its maximum possible weight, I find that it does not lead to a reasonable doubt."
And in a decision issued March 14, B.C. Court of Appeal Justice Pamela Kirkpatrick found the original verdict was reasonable and that the judge had "properly considered the lost evidence."
Garnot was found guilty of aggravated sexual assault for the 2001 incident. The match with Garnot's DNA was discovered in 2008 during a search of the national databank and the matter went to trial in late 2010.
In 2015, he was declared a dangerous offender, which means Garnot has had to serve at least seven years behind bars before he can apply for parole and if he is released from prison, he will be under supervision for the rest of his life.
Garnot had six previous convictions for sexual offences, all involving children, and a criminal record of 56 convictions since his first one in 1973, when he was prosecuted as an adult at age 15.
He has been sentenced to periods of imprisonment totaling about 30 years.
Whether Garnot has since been released on parole was not immediately available on Wednesday.
