Snelgrove testifies at his trial for sexual assault
‘I felt rotten,’ RNC officer testifies at his sexual assault trial, saying he knew his job was in jeopardy over what he argues was consensual sex
On the witness stand at his sexual assault trial Monday, Royal Newfoundland Constabulary officer Doug Snelgrove didn’t offer much of an answer when asked a burning question by his lawyer.
“Why did you go in?” Randy Piercey asked Snelgrove, who had just told the court he was on duty when he drove a young woman home from downtown St. John’s in December 2014, helped her find a way into her apartment when she realized she had lost her keys and then accepted her invitation to come inside.
“I don’t know, honestly,” Snelgrove replied after a heavy sigh. “I can’t explain it. For the life of me and for the last seven years I’ve tried to figure out why.”
Snelgrove, 43, was testifying before a jury for the third time. A jury originally acquitted him in 2017, but a new trial was later ordered. That trial happened last fall, but ended in a mistrial after Justice Garrett Handrigan determined he had made a protocol error when dismissing two alternate jurors before sequestering the remaining 12 to begin their deliberations.
The complainant, 27, testified last week she had been on a night out with friends when she felt she had become too drunk and needed to go home and sleep. She had walked toward Water Street to hail a cab and came across an RNC vehicle, she said. The officer rolled down his window and asked if she needed a ride home.
“I felt it was safer to go with a police officer,” she testified.
She said her memory of the night was patchy due to her level of intoxication and she believes she had blacked out.
The woman said she remembered misplacing her apartment keys and the officer opening her kitchen window for her to climb in, after first offering to drive her to a friend’s place. She said she went to the door and let the constable in because he wanted to make sure she was OK.
“I remember we did kiss. I don’t know who started it,” the woman testified, saying she recalled sitting on her living room couch because she felt too drunk to stand. She remembered nothing after that and described blacking out until the officer’s voice brought her around.
“I was on the loveseat and he was over me, having anal sex with me,” she testified.
The woman said she couldn’t recall whether or not she had agreed to the sexual activity.
A person cannot legally give consent if they are unconscious or severely intoxicated, and they can’t legally give consent to sexual activity with someone in a position of authority or trust who abuses that position to induce the consent. All sexual activity without consent is a crime.
Snelgrove said Monday he had been in his vehicle, parked on an incline outside the city lockup around 3 a.m. when the woman walked over to him. He put down a window to see what she wanted after she tried to open a door, he said.
“(She) basically told me that she had no way home, that she was stuck downtown and her friends had left her and she was asking me if I would give her a ride home,” he testified, saying the woman had not seemed drunk.
He initially refused and told the woman he was busy with paperwork, he said.
“I said, ‘No, no, no,’ but she kept pressing me to give her a ride home,” he testified. “Because she wouldn’t stop asking me I eventually agreed."
The woman gave him detailed directions to her basement apartment, Snelgrove said, and they chatted during the drive. At her home, she got out of the car while he stayed to complete his paperwork, the officer testified. The woman returned minutes later, telling him she had lost her keys and couldn’t get in. Snelgrove said she declined his offer to drive her to a friend’s place before he helped her check the apartment windows, finding one open. The woman climbed inside and told him to wait a minute before leaving, he told the court. She then opened her front door and he went in.
“At that point I was thinking to myself, what am I doing here? Just turn around,” Snelgrove testified.
As he turned to leave, the woman stepped in front of him and started kissing him, he said.
“Did you do anything to initiate it?” Piercey asked.
“No, nothing,” Snelgrove replied.
“She initiated the removing of her clothes. I mean, I may have assisted,” he said, explaining how he helped her with her clothes and the lock on his police belt.
After that, the woman performed oral sex on him before pulling him to the couch, he said.
“I asked (her) what she liked and she said everything,” Snelgrove testified. “I asked her what she meant and she said she’d do anything.”
The woman agreed to have anal sex, he told the court, and when it was over 10 minutes later, he went to the bathroom and prepared to leave. He said he had not had any concerns for the woman’s sobriety.
“She started to kiss me first, she started to remove her clothes, she was naked, she undid my belt, lowered my pants, she provided oral sex. I never asked for any of that,” he said.
The officer cried when he testified about leaving the residence, saying the woman wanted him to stay.
“I was upset. I felt rotten. I started thinking about my wife,” Snelgrove said. “I couldn’t believe what I had just done and how much it would hurt her. I was thinking about my job and I knew very well that what I had just done jeopardized that.”
On cross-examination, Crown prosecutor Lloyd Strickland reviewed Snelgrove’s notebook, pointing out the high level of detail in his notes from that night, but no mentioned of the woman.
Snelgrove acknowledged he hadn’t followed RNC procedure of radioing in to say he had a lone female aboard his vehicle and giving his location and mileage, then doing the same after dropping her off.
“No one knew and no one would ever know that you gave this young woman a ride home,” Strickland said.
Snelgrove said he hadn’t deemed driving the woman home to be a police task, like the other things in his notes.
“Are you saying when you took this young woman home you weren’t a police officer? You (had) your uniform on and you (were) in a police car,” Strickland said. “She came to you because you were a police officer. She didn’t go to random cars and try to open the door, she tried to open your door.”
“I would say it wasn’t a police task, I was just bringing (her) home,” Snelgrove replied.
The court also heard testimony last Wednesday from toxicologist Dr. Peter Mullen of Nova Scotia — though Mullen died in February.
Mullen had testified for the defence at Snelgrove’s previous trials. Having reviewed the evidence in the case, Mullen had provided the defence with a report in 2016, saying he believed the complainant could have experienced an alcohol-induced blackout, but might have appeared sober.
The defence had intended to call Mullen to testify again this week, but were informed of his death shortly before trial. Instead, the court heard an audio recording of one of the expert’s previous testimonies.
Snelgrove will be back in Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court on Wednesday, when Justice Vikas Khaladkar will hear closing arguments from the lawyers before giving his final instructions to the jury.