New sex-assault trial ordered for officer

Ontario Court justice believes judge may have erred in decision to acquit

A Toronto police sergeant found not guilty of sexually assaulting two women is headed back to court after an Ontario Court justice found the trial judge may have erred in his decision to acquit.

Justice Tamarin Dunnet has ordered another trial for Christopher Heard, who was found not guilty last year of sexually assaulting two women in separate incidents that allegedly occurred while he was on duty in late 2015.

In each case, Heard was alleged to have picked up a woman who was alone in downtown’s Entertainment District, offered her a ride home, then groped her once they were inside the police vehicle.

Heard, 47, did not dispute that he picked up the women and drove them home, but denied the allegations of sexual assault.

He did not activate the vehicle’s in-car camera system in either case.

The women, who were strangers to each other and whose identities are covered by a publication ban, made what trial Judge Russell Otter called “strikingly similar” allegations against Heard.

But he concluded that inconsistencies in their testimony at trial gave him “reasonable doubt as to whether the sexual assault occurred” and acquitted Heard on both counts.

Crown lawyer Philip Perlmutter appealed Otter’s ruling, arguing that the provincial judge fell into a “pattern of cascading errors,” including failing to adequately consider the fact that two strangers made allegations that were “identical in every respect and circumstance.”

There was no other “logical explanation … unless they actually occurred,” Perlmutter wrote in court documents filed before a one-day appeal hearing last month.

Dunnet agreed, writing in a decision released Monday that the trial judge did not properly consider the similarities between two complainants’ accounts, which could have bolstered their credibility.

Had he properly considered this, he would have had an important piece of evidence to “support a legitimate chain of reasoning that (Heard) sexually assaulted the complainants,” she wrote.

“Absent the trial judge’s errors, the verdicts would not necessarily have been the same,” Dunnet wrote.

Gary Clewley, Heard’s lawyer, could not be immediately reached for comment on Monday.

At last month’s appeal hearing, he argued that Otter acquitted his client because “he didn’t believe the two complainants.”