Appeals court upholds overturning of jury’s sex assault conviction
A Pennsylvania appellate court has upheld an Allegheny County judge’s controversial decision to throw out a jury conviction in a sexual assault case.
Two judges on a threejudge Superior Court panel on Thursday affirmed Common Pleas Judge Alexander P. Bicket’s decision to throw out a jury’s conviction of Joon Woo “Jason” Baik, who was initially found guilty of sexually assaulting a University of Pittsburgh student in 2019, after his lawyer asked the judge to overturn the decision.
In his decision, Judge Bicket cited contradictory evidence and pointed out
that the woman did not testify that she did not consent to having sex; rather, she testified that she did not remember the evening.
Audio of the encounter was recorded by Mr. Baik, and the appellate court found that the recording and the woman’s statements showed she “displayed awareness of external events.”
“The Complainant responded to questions asked by Baik throughout the encounter,” Senior Judge John L. Musmanno wrote in the 13-page appellate opinion.
Mr. Baik, a South Korean and Canadian dual citizen who was enrolled at Carnegie Mellon University that year, and the woman had the interaction in September 2018 after drinking liquor and watching a movie in his dorm room, according to court records.
The recording ends with the woman screaming “stop” and saying she had to go home. She left the dorm still naked, and police and paramedics took her to a hospital after meeting her outside the building.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette does not identify victims of alleged sexual assault.
The woman spoke with Pittsburgh police Sgt. Timothy Werner at the hospital — a conversation further proving her recollection, the court found.
“According to Sgt. Werner, the Complainant affirmed that she had consensual sexual intercourse with Baik, and her account of the evening matched that of Baik,” Judge Musmanno wrote.
The prosecution’s evidence does not contradict the statements that the woman gave after the event and does not prove that the encounter was nonconsensual beyond a reasonable doubt, he wrote.
In a four-page dissent, Judge Maria McLaughlin disagreed with the majority’s conclusion.
“Baik himself testified that he recorded the encounter with the victim in case there was any question of the voluntariness of the intercourse because of the victim’s intoxication,” she wrote.
“That damning testimony was enough for the jury to find that Baik knew the victim could not properly consent. Why else would he create a record to protect himself?”
Other evidence supports the conclusion, Judge McLaughlin wrote, that the woman was incapable of properly consenting to sex: Her speech was slurred, she was alternatively screaming that she loved and hated Mr. Baik, and she said she was “going to die.”
Police officers who met the woman at the scene said she was visibly intoxicated, with one stating her drunkenness appeared to be at a “nine” if placed on a 10-point scale.
The woman also testified that she was “pretty drunk” and said she did not recall having sex with Mr. Baik. The majority failed to see that certain contradictions in the evidence were a result of the woman’s intoxication, a conclusion seemingly reached by the jury, Judge McLaughlin wrote.