Jury unable to agree in indecent assault trial
AUCKLAND: The trial of a taxi driver accused of groping radio host JayJay Feeney has ended in a hung jury.
Baljeet Singh’s trial for allegedly indecently assaulting the radio host began in the Auckland District Court on Monday before a jury and Judge Nevin Dawson.
Feeney, the longtime host of The Edge’s breakfast show, waived her right to suppression and has talked about her allegations on social media.
Singh (28) denied the charge and entered a plea of not guilty last year.
Hours into their deliberations, members of the jury told the court they were evenly divided on the verdict and were not making any progress.
Later they told Judge Dawson they had exhausted all their possibilities.
Judge Dawson, who summed up the case yesterday morning, discharged the jury late in the afternoon.
The judge said the jurists had done their best.
Singh was remanded on bail and will appear in court again in two weeks when the Crown will decide if it will seek a retrial.
The Crown said Feeney has been ‘‘consistent, candid and straightup’’ throughout the trial and had never resiled from her evidence that she had been indecently assaulted.
But the defence said Singh had been publicly and falsely accused and ‘‘is living every man’s worst nightmare’’.
Feeney had been a passenger in Singh’s taxi in the early hours of October 1 last year.
This week the court heard the conversation in the taxi between the two had started normally before Singh asked about her relationship status.
On Monday, Feeney said during the taxi ride Singh ‘‘was commenting on how beautiful I was and how I had nice breasts’’.
She said Singh had also stroked her hand.
‘‘That’s when I started feeling uncomfortable,’’ she told the court.
The radio host said Singh told her she did not have to pay for the trip.
‘‘No pay, I touch your breasts,’’ Feeney recalled Singh saying.
‘‘It took me a couple of minutes to convince him to take my card off me.’’
After paying, Feeney said: ‘‘He reached over and put his hand down my top, under my bra.’’
In his police interview, played in court yesterday, Singh denied indecently assaulting Feeney and denied commenting on her breasts.
‘‘I didn’t say anything of that sort,’’ he told police with the assistance of a translator who spoke Punjabi.
‘‘No, nothing like that happened.
‘‘I did not touch her at all.’’ — NZME