Sex-assault conviction of border agent overturned

HALIFAX — Nova Scotia’s highest court has ordered a new trial for a former Canada Border Services agent who was found guilty last year of sexually assaulting and extorting a woman facing deportation.

Chief Justice Michael Wood of the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal wrote in the decision released Wednesday that trial judge Suzanne Hood of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court made several errors in law in the conviction of Carie Dexter Willis.

Willis launched an appeal last year of his conviction and sixyear prison sentence.

Writing on behalf of the unanimous three-judge appeal panel, Wood said Hood subjected Willis’s evidence to a “high degree of scrutiny, often on issues of marginal relevance,” and didn’t apply the same standard to his accuser.

He said that was the case over the issue of whether Willis, 59, was circumcised.

The accuser had testified he was not circumcised, but both Willis and his wife testified that he was. Wood called this a “significant contradiction.”

According to the decision’s summary of facts, the woman arrived in Canada as a student in 1996 and was turned down for refugee status in 2003.

The charges against Willis arose from the woman’s allegations that he induced her in 2003 to enter into a nonconsensual sexual relationship in exchange for his ensuring deportation proceedings against her would not proceed.

Willis testified that after he told the woman about the deportation arrangements, she missed her flight and he never saw her again until after he was charged in 2016 and the case came before the courts.

Wood said the two versions of the facts were “starkly different,” but the trial judge tended to be more accepting of the complainant’s account.

The woman testified about a sexual relationship that spanned several months and included intercourse one or two times a week for the final month or so.

The decision overturns the conviction and means that Willis, who now lives in Montreal, will remain free on bail conditions until his new trial.

The appeal was heard on June 11.