Adjourned until next week
British sailor’s trial adjourned after Crown decides against calling witness
The trial of a British sailor accused of sexually assaulting a young woman in the barracks of a Halifax-area military base was adjourned Friday until next week.
The Crown told Justice Patrick Duncan it had intended to call a toxicologist to the stand at Darren Smalley’s trial, but decided against calling the witness.
Crown lawyer Eric Taylor indicated that military police Sgt. Tyler BruceHayes, who testified earlier in the trial, is expected to take the stand again when the trial resumes on Tuesday in Nova Scotia Supreme Court.
Bruce-Hayes has yet to be cross-examined by the defence because of delays at the outset of the trial due to the hospitalization of a co-accused, British sailor Simon Radford, for a serious infection. The Crown has stayed charges against Radford, but they can be reinstituted within a year.
The 38-year-old Smalley is charged with sexual assault causing bodily harm and participating in a sexual assault involving one or more people in the barracks of 12 Wing Shearwater in April 2015.
The case once involved a total of four accused, but charges against two other sailors were dropped.
The complainant has testified that she was gang raped by at least three men.
On Thursday, the sexual assault nurse who examined the complainant after the alleged incident testified she found a number of bruises and injuries on the woman.
Paula Nickerson testified there were certain injuries on the woman’s genitals that surprised her because they were not injuries she had commonly found on sexual assault complainants.
She said the amount and variety of the injuries made it one of the more “significant’’ cases she handled during her eight years as a sexual assault nurse.
The trial also heard from a forensic DNA specialist from an RCMP lab in Ottawa on Thursday.
Florence Celestin said human semen was discovered on the complainant’s underwear, and two DNA profiles were discovered on the underwear: the complainant’s and a male.
She testified the DNA profile of the male matched a DNA profile taken from the one of the four suspects originally charged in the case.
She did not name the suspect, but defence lawyer Ian Hutchison noted that it was his client’s DNA profile.
Celestin conceded to Hutchinson that the DNA could have been transferred from elsewhere, such as sheets, a blanket or chair.