Gang president acquitted

A Black Power gang president who was on trial accused of raping and kidnapping a woman in a weekend-long ordeal has been found not guilty.

The jury was unable to reach a decision, with a hung jury on two related charges. Its verdicts were delivered in the High Court at Palmerston North yesterday, after hours of deliberations that began on Friday.

Leslie Peter Ross, 48, told the jury he was a Black Power president who had spent 30 years in jail. He was accused of raping, assaulting, kidnapping and threatening to kill a woman over the 2017 Queen’s Birthday Weekend.

The two not-guilty rulings on the rape and kidnap charges were majority verdicts, meaning one of the 12 jurors didn’t agree. The jury was unable to reach a decision on assault and threatening to kill charges.

Ross and the woman agree they met for the first time on the weekend in question, and spent time travelling to various North Island sites, including Napier, Clive, Palmerston North and Dannevirke. They had sex at a house in Palmerston North, and Ross gave her a tattoo the next day.

The woman fled to Feilding after getting the tattoo. Shop attendants who found her said she seemed to have been through an ordeal.

The woman said she was punched in the head, told she may be shot in the head, and was afraid to leave Ross in case he harmed her or people she knew.

She rejected his sexual advances twice but later let him have sex with her out of fear.

Ross said the violence and threats never happened and the pair had consensual sex.

Justice David Collins kept Ross in custody until the prosecution can decide what to do about the two charges on which the jury could not agree.