Man guilty of sexual assault of girl, 15

A self-represented Duncan man has been convicted of the sexual assault of a 15-year-old Duncan girl in 2003.

The four-woman, eight-man jury struggled for two days to decide if Peter Charles Leno was guilty of committing the sexual assault on the teenager.

The jury began deliberations about 11:30 a.m Tuesday. After a few hours, the jury returned to court with a request to replay the video statement the 15-year-old gave to police in June 2003. The jury then listened to the woman being cross-examined during the trial.

On Wednesday afternoon, they returned to court to advise Justice Keith Bracken they were having trouble reaching a unanimous verdict. Bracken told the jury it was not mandatory that they reach a unanimous verdict.

“It’s obviously desirable. You took an oath to deliver a true verdict based on the evidence and you must do the utmost to deliver that oath.”

Bracken said he could discharge the jury when further deliberations proved futile. But he did not want to exercise that power too lightly or too quickly.

He asked them to give it one more try and work a little longer.

At 9:30 p.m., they found Leno guilty as charged.

Bracken ordered a pre-sentence report with a psychological component be prepared. The case has been adjourned until July 18 to set a date for sentencing.

Bracken had told the jury that the evidence connecting Leno to the crime came solely from the DNA evidence.

The victim, now 30, was unable to identify the men who pulled her into the bushes and raped her.

The Crown’s theory was that the teen went to a 7-Eleven at an Esso gas station in Duncan on the evening of June 23, 2003, to meet a friend. Her friend did not show up, but a car with three men pulled into the parking lot. They began talking to her. She became friendly with one of the men and kissed him behind the gas station.

They invited her to go for a drive and she got into the back seat of the car, where she kissed the man.

They drove to a parking area beside a trail and got out of the car. The men offered her a beer and she drank some of it. The Crown said the men attacked her, forced her to lie down, took off her pants and underwear. At least one of them had forced vaginal intercourse with her. Two others forced her to perform oral sex.

The men left and the girl walked back to the 7-Eleven with only one shoe.

Experts testified that DNA found on the girl’s underpants in 2003 matched a blood sample police obtained from Leno in February 2016.

Crown witness and DNA expert Cindy Lee concluded that the likelihood of another male having the same DNA profile as Leno was one in 1.1 trillion.

Leno claimed the DNA analysis was not reliable.

He also argued that the woman was not a credible witness. She was on drugs or sick from not having drugs, he said. She made up the story because of pressure from her boyfriend or to avoid punishment for missing her curfew at the group home where she was staying, he said.

The jury was told to disregard the comments Leno made about the woman.