Businessman acquitted of rape

Today it took less than 30 minutes for a jury sitting at Gloucester Crown Crown to return a verdict of not guilty in favour of a businessman accused of so-called “date rape”.

Reflecting on another successful defence, Jim Meyer observed just how big the gap is between those who can now afford to pull out all the stops in pursuing their defence and those who cannot. The case hinged on CCTV evidence showing our client and the complainant throughout the night in question; the footage exposed the exaggerations and inconsistencies in the account given by the complainant. It was the detailed examination of that footage, work that would not have been separately remunerated under any publicly funded criminal defence scheme, that contributed significantly to the client’s acquittal. The jury were also persuaded by expert evidence which was called to rebut the suggestion that the complainant was “too drunk and incapable of giving informed consent”; again, such an expert would likely not have been funded under the current legal aid scheme.