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The Supreme Court of Canada has sent a sexual assault case against a Saskatchewan man back for a new trial, which will be the third time Soon Hyong Kwon has faced one for the same accusation.
Kwon was accused in 2015 of sexually assaulting a woman he had been giving a ride home.
He was the owner of a bar in Grenfellat the time and the victim, only referred to as A.D. in court documents, was there with her husband.
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In the second trial, court was told they had been drinking beforehand, and she continued drinking at the bar after her husband left.
She got a ride home to a nearby First Nation with Kwon. She told the court she didn’t remember much from the drive. She woke up hungover the next morning and found evidence of intercourse, so she and her husband went to the hospital and a sexual assault kit was done. Kwon’s DNA was found in her underwear and on a swab that was taken.
Kwon told court he had stopped the truck to let the woman get out and pee and when she got back in, she asked him to have sex.
Kwon said she didn’t seem drunk when she was speaking and she wasn’t stumbling. The woman told the court she needed help to get into Kwon’s truck and a witness at the bar had put her at an eight out of 10 for intoxication.
At the first trial Kwon was convicted but he took it to the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal, and the case was sent back for a new trial.
In the second trial, Kwon was also convicted.
The judge in that trial found Kwon’s testimony wasn’t credible, that parts of his evidence were “disingenuous and argumentative”.
Kwon again appealed the conviction. All of the justices at the Court of Appeal last year found the judge’s verdict unreasonable, saying she made assumptions about what men and women would do in these situations, which were “clearly illogical and unwarranted” and those assumptions were an integral part of her consideration of Kwon’s credibility.
The appeals court overturned Kwon’s conviction and entered an acquittal on the charge. Justice Tholl was the only dissenting opinion, arguing the case should be sent back for a new trial, saying tha while the trial judge made errors, a new judge could conceivably look at the same evidence and arrive at a guilty verdict.
The Crown appealed the acquittal to the Supreme Court of Canada, which last week allowed the appeal and agreed with Tholl, sending it back for another new trial.
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