Harris has one of 12 assault convictions overturned
● Judges rule conviction unsafe but reject bid to challenge the rest
Disgraced entertain er Rolf Harris has had one of 12 in decent assault convictions over turned by the Court of Appeal.
Three judges in London ruled that the conviction was “unsafe ”. But they rejected applications by Harris ,87, from Bray, Berkshire, to challenge 11 other indecent assault convictions.
Lord Justice Treacy, Mrs Justice McGowan and the Recorder of Preston, Judge Mark Brown, announced their decision yesterday.
The artist and musician was convicted of 12 in decent assault sat London’ s Southwark Crown Court in June 2014, one on an eightyear-old auto graph hunter, two on girls in their early teens, and a catalogue of abuse against his daughter’s friend over 16 years.
Harris, a family favourite for decades, was jailed for five years and nine months after being convicted of assaults which took place between 1968 and 1986.
The Australian- born television presenter has since been released from that sentence. He was not in court for the ruling by the appeal judges.
The prosecution did not seek a retrial on the one count and the judges agreed that a further trial would not be in the public interest.
The quashed conviction related to an allegation that Harris indecently assaulted an eight- year- old girl in 1969 when she attended an event at a leisure centre in Portsmouth.
But the judges refused Harris permission to appeal against the rest of the 2014 convictions.
They ruled that“stepping back and looking at the totality of the evidence” on those remaining counts“we find nothing that causes us to doubt the safety of those convictions”.
Stephen Vullo QC, for Harris, had presented four grounds of appeal at a recent hearing, which Harris attended.
One ground was that there was “fresh” evidence which supported Harris’s case, and complaint was also made about a direction given to the jury relating to the credibility of complainants.
In May this year Harris was formally cleared of unconnected historical sex offences, which he had denied.
He was formally cleared off our counts of in decent assault against girls as young as 13 after a retrial ended with a hung jury.
The quashing of the one count centred on new evidence about the credibility of prosecution witness David James.
He was the only person, apart from the complainant herself, who gave evidence about the entertainer attending the leisure centre at the relevant time.
Lord Justice Treacy said the late Mr James was an “important witness” on count one at the trial, and if material now known about him had been “obtained and disclosed at the correct time it is very doubtful that Mr James would have been called as a witness”.