N.L. officer found not guilty of sex assault

More than two years after he was accused of sexually assaulting a woman while on duty, Royal Newfoundland Constabulary Const. Carl Douglas Snelgrove was acquitted of the charge Friday evening.

The complainant was in tears as she immediately left the courtroom at Newfoundland Supreme Court in St. John’s through the side door.

As the jury left the courtroom, Snelgrove was also in tears and rushed to the spectators’ gallery and hugged his wife and family, who were also crying while leaning over to embrace him.

“It’s been a very difficult time for Doug and his wife and their family and they’re just very relieved that it’s over,” Snelgrove’s lawyer, Randy Piercey, told reporters.

“I think it was a lawful and proper verdict. And now he has the opportunity to move on with his life.”

Piercey – who was co-counsel with Jon Noonan – said once they got outside the courtroom with Snelgrove, “He cried, he hugged me and he said thank you.”

It took the six men and five women – one juror was dismissed on the opening day of the trial – a day and a half to render their verdict. They were sequestered Thursday afternoon after Justice Valerie Marshall instructed them on the law, and they began deliberating at 2 p.m. The verdict was rendered just before 7 p.m. Friday.

In a case that triggered much reaction from women’s groups and others in the community, the issue centred around consent and whether the 21-year-old woman, who got a ride home with Snelgrove in the early morning hours of Dec. 21, 2014, voluntarily agreed to have sex with him in her apartment.

The woman testified in the week-and-a-half-long trial that she was drunk that night after partying at a downtown bar and couldn’t recall if she gave consent. She said she passed out and when she came to, Snelgrove was having anal sex with her.

However, Snelgrove, 39, testified that the woman appeared fine when she approached the car, and he didn’t see any signs of intoxication. He said he’s not sure why he went inside her place, but that when he did, she made sexual advances and he responded. He said he believed the sex was consensual and that the woman was capable of giving consent.

In her instruction to jurors Thursday, Marshall said that in order to convict, they must be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the woman’s voluntary agreement was invalid because she was incapable of consenting, as she was unconscious.

“The law is: mere drunkenness is not the equivalent of being incapable …,” she said.