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I am not talking about giving evidence to the police. In the alleged offences I mentioned it is necessary for the arrested person to explain his innocent to the "Court". The police only act on what they see or information they obtain. This is why many years ago people would carry a small coin, like a farthing, in their shoe, so if a constable said they were a vagrant, i.e. ;having no visible means of support' they could prevent the constable from arresting them by showing the farthing.
It brings me back to one of the troubling things about this case. The police acted without any complaint from the alleged victim. (Please let's all be clear - I use the words'alleged' victim because in law if there is no perpetrator there cannot be any victim.
In a criminal case it is totally unnecessary for the defendant to prove anything, it is for the prosecution to prove he/she committed the act of which he/she is accused.
There has been at least one case where after being arrested the defendant never spoke one word to anyone including the police, and at trial he was acquitted.
If you research cases I think you (and for the benefit of Lardy, in common parlance 'You' means 'One') will find that most convictions stand in some part due to the answers that the accused gave, or statement they have made.
What the Court of Appeal have decided is that if the original jury had been presented with this strange new evidence, there's a reasonable chance they may have reached a different verdict. (They might not have done, of course.)
Had the CPS thought the evidence proved his innocence, they wouldn't have asked for a retrial. Had the Court of Appeal thought it proved his innocence, they wouldn't have ordered one.
It's not surprising: he was convicted largely on what he said and what MacDonald said and didn't say and Evans can't change that, no matter how much he offers for new evidence.
No, the Court of Appeal could have done that, just as they (eventually) did for the Birmingham Six etc. They weren't sent for a retrial.
If the CPS offer no evidence, despite having asked for a retrial during the second appeal knowing what this mysterious new evidence is, I'd expect a resignation.
Then those of us who think the verdicts of the original jury, the single judge of the Court of Appeal, and a full trio of judges in his first appeal were right will be pleased. If he does get convicted at the second trial, he's not going to be sent to prison, merely restored to the position he was in until last month: guilty, but out on licence.
You only get compensation if the evidence on which you were cleared is so compelling that no conviction could possibly be based upon it. Here, it clearly isn't, or the Court of Appeal wouldn't have ordered a retrial.
What was the new evidence? Pm welcome.
The original jury had no doubt that she did not consent! The reason for that is her state of intoxication: every witness who did not want to stick their penis in her said she was extremely drunk; MacDonald thought she was so drunk that the hotel night porter needed to be told to look out for her; and by the time of the first appeal even the Evans legal team accepted that she was so drunk, she didn't remember what had happened.
(This disproves the Evans lie that she made a complaint to make money. 'I don't remember what happened' is not a story you can sell to anyone.)
So she didn't have the capacity to consent to sex with either man. I have never thought Evans intended to rape her and that he genuinely believes that he did not. However, a belief in consent needs to be reasonable to be a defence.
"I am a famous footballer who can get a bird whenever he likes" doesn't count (and begs the question that if he wanted to have sex with someone that night, why did he need to have seconds on someone MacDonald had picked up, rather than finding someone himself?) and neither does "well, she shagged my mate, so she clearly wants to shag me too".
MacDonald could argue that he'd talked to her outside the hotel, he'd gone to the room with her, and in general behaved as if nothing was wrong. He may have had a reasonable belief, so the jury acquitted him.
But Evans? On his own evidence, he turned up in the room uninvited (neither MacDonald nor the woman asked him to come), unexpected (they'd locked the door and he needed to lie to get the key), and unwanted (MacDonald left not long after he arrived, despite not having ejaculated).
When he came in, his brother and a mate were already outside the window trying to film the sex. (How did they manage that, unless Evans told them where to go? No-one says that they had her consent to do that, and they certainly didn't have MacDonald's consent: when he heard them giggling, he closed the curtains.)
Evans says she was asked if she wanted to have sex with him… but both he and McDonald gave evidence on oath that they didn’t ask her. (Who did then? Is the strange new evidence a claim that there was a fourth person in the room?)
Although he says she was repeatedly “calling out” for more vigorous sex with him, no-one in a position to hear that – the brother and the mate or the night porter outside the door who could hear that sex was happening – heard that. MacDonald doesn't say that he heard it either, before he left them to it.
When Evans stopped having sex with her - he says because he was worried his girlfriend might ring, but it's possible he found that sex with semi-comatose women is really boring - he left via fire-escape.
So it’s not surprising that the original jury decided that Evans – beyond a reasonable doubt – did not have a reasonable belief in her consent.
I would LOVE to know what the new evidence is. From his website, it seems to be mostly based on regretting that he was heard to make various admissions in a conversation with McDonald which stopped him lying later, being annoyed that the police didn’t do the defence's job for them, and going ‘.. but she’s a slag!’ Alas, even slags get to say who has sex with them.
I'd rather be a **** than a rape apologist.