A former swim coach in Canada’s Northwest Territories is appealing his sexual assault conviction, saying the 2015 trial had been unfair.
Michael St. John was a swim coach and a school board trustee in Hay River, which is located near the southern border of Canada’s Northwest Territories. St. John was convicted of sexual interference in June of 2015 after a female minor accused him of repeatedly assaulting her over the course of a decade.
Now, according to the CBC, St. John’s attorney Caroline Wawzonek appeared in front of the Northwest Territories Court of Appeal this week, arguing that the judge in that trial had made a number of errors during the trial. Per CBC, here is a list of the alleged errors:
- allowing prejudicial evidence to be presented to jury members
- failing to explain the difference between “intentional touching” and “touching for a sexual purpose” to the jury
- making mistakes when summarizing the evidence for the jury at the end of the trial
- putting a witness protection screen in front of St. John instead of in front of the witness — a mistake that Wawzonek says interfered with St. John’s charter right to a fair trial
The Crown attorneys in the case (lawyers who represent the government in criminal cases; the rough equivalent of district attorneys in the United States) argued that the judge had been fair in conducting the trial and challenged all of the claims, though they did admit he misspoke while summarizing the evidence. According to the CBC report, the Crown attorneys said that “this was a minor misstatement of the evidence which would have had no bearing on the jury’s deliberation.”
The Court of Appeal is expected to rule sometime in the coming months, per CBC.
St. John was originally accused and convicted of inappropriately touching and molesting a girl, often under the guise of giving her massages after swimming. The girl was between the ages of 5 and 14 when the abuse occurred.
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