A B.C. Supreme Court Justice has overturned a lower-court decision and acquitted a man previously convicted of sexually assaulting his now ex-fiancée while she was in the psychiatric ward at University Hospital of Northern B.C.
Justice Gary Weatherill issued the decision Friday following a trial.
The man, who cannot be named under a court-ordered publication ban against information that would identify the victim, won a new trial after his lawyer, Keith Aartsen, argued there had been a error in law.
Despite being in the psychiatric ward, she was still capable of giving consent as defined under the law, he maintained.
Aartsen had taken the case over from another lawyer after the man was sentenced in September 2016 to 18 months in jail. The man had pleaded guilty to the offence expecting he would be sentenced to three years probation under a joint submission from Crown and defence counsels.
But provincial court judge Shannon Keyes found the sentence too lenient. She also commented that if the case had been treated as indictable rather than as a summary offence, 2 1/2 years would have been more appropriate.
Although the man pleaded guilty, he continued to claim during the pre-sentence process that the woman gave consent. Keyes found that irrelevant given the victim's condition.
