A rape trial at Worcester Crown Court was stopped at the end of the prosecution’s case this week following an application by Adam Western.  The judge agreed with Adam that the case should be withdrawn from the jury because the evidence against his client was so weak.  On the judge’s direction, the jury cleared Adam’s client of rape.

Adam’s client and the complainant knew one another.  At the end of a date together in Birmingham city centre on a Sunday evening in 2023, she invited the defendant back to her home.  The complainant had told the defendant of her interest in rough sex and, during Adam’s cross-examination, she didn’t disagree that before having sex with the defendant she had shown him her box of sex toys including two whips, a ‘flogger’, sets of handcuffs, a gag-ball, heavy duty body straps, hog-ties and a police officer’s uniform.  She agreed, during Adam’s questioning, that she may have taken out a larger vibrator after the batteries on her smaller one ran flat.

The issue in the trial was the defendant’s reasonable belief in the complainant’s consent.  The complainant had alleged that although she initially consented to sexual intercourse with the defendant she withdrew that consent when, she said, he had become too rough with her.  The judge agreed with Adam’s submission that no reasonable jury properly directed could conclude that the defendant’s continued belief that she was consenting to intercourse was unreasonable.

Adam was instructed by Joanne Davidson-Evans of Murray Brankin Tuckers solicitors in Coventry www.tuckerssolicitors.com.