3 years after being convicted of multiple rape counts, Oliver Weetch’s client is acquitted at his re-trial after the Court of Appeal overturn all of his convictions
In 2015, the client was convicted after trial of multiple counts of rape of a child under 13 and sentenced to 14 years imprisonment. In 2018, Oliver Weetch was instructed by Ashley Smith & Co to review the original case papers and advise on whether there may be arguable grounds of appeal against conviction.
He had not been original trial Counsel in 2015. After reviewing the case file, grounds of appeal against conviction were identified and submitted to the Court of Appeal with an application for them to be considered out of time. Those grounds arose from ther way in which the Judge had summed-up the case to the jury at the trial in 2015, and specifically to a direction about whether all counts on the indictment stood or fell together. At the start of 2018, the full Court of Appeal heard the substantive appeal, leave having previously been granted by the single Judge, and agreed with the grounds identified and argued by the defence. The Court of Appeal quashed all of the convictions and ordered a re-trial. That re-trial just ended with the defendant, respresented by Oliver Weetch, being found not guilty of all the counts he had been found guilty of by a different jury in 2015.
