November 26, 2009

Acquittal ends rape trial

A jury took just over two hours to find Nicholas James Franklin not guilty of rape at the end of a three-day trial in the High Court at Christchurch.

Thirty-year-old Franklin now returns to prison to serve the rest of the seven year four month jail term he was given in August for another rape.

The jury was told about the earlier rape case during the latest trial because the crown got permission to have the details presented to the court. Both cases involved young women who had become drunk.

At the August sentencing, the court was told that Franklin had a criminal record stretching to nine pages of print-out, with convictions for burglary, theft, and being found unlawfully in yards.

He admitted raping a young woman who the crown said was asleep, intoxicated and extremely vulnerable at the time, in a lodge on the West Coast in 2007.

He denied this later charge alleging a rape at a house in Rangiora, saying that he had tried to have sex with the 17-year-old but had stopped when she asked him to, complaining that it was hurting.

The trial heard evidence that soon after the incident in Rangiora last year, the complainant told a friend that Franklin had ?tried to have sex with me?.

Defence counsel David Bunce said that was in line with Franklin?s own account, and did not constitute a rape.

Trial judge Justice Lester Chisholm discharged Franklin after the verdict, and thanked the jury on behalf of the community.

Tim Mackenzie appeared for the crown.

The trial had been aborted on Monday after an outburst outside the Court House by the complainant, overheard by some jurors. A new trial began on Tuesday with a new jury, and three members of the original jury were called as witnesses.

? A report of yesterday?s proceedings in the trial, concerning jurors being called as witnesses, implied that court staff and the trial judge Justice Lester Chisholm had made some comment while the trial was in progress. This was not the case.