On 14 July 2020, around 70 people gathered at a house party in Eastern Norway. The convicted man says they had sex in the bathroom that evening. The woman has explained that she was brutally raped in the bathroom. news has met the man who served ten weeks in prison before he had the case reopened. The case was reported 14 months after the incident. – It felt like life stopped when I got that phone call from the police. But I still had faith in the justice system and the police, at that time, says the man. The Commission for the Resumption of Criminal Cases writes that “the media files were new evidence that seems suitable to lead to an acquittal”, as stated in the Criminal Procedure Act. In September, the case will come up again in court, more than four years after the incident. Casting doubts about SMS The police questioned 6 of around 70 party participants, according to the defender. Neither the police nor the state attorney will comment on the investigation. Holmen tried to postpone the trial so that more electronic evidence could be collected from people at the party. She was refused, and the man was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison. Among other things, the woman received supporting witness statements. After the verdict, the defender and the client contacted several party participants, and now the case has been resumed precisely because of new electronic evidence from a new witness. They found among them a woman who had been at the party and who went back in old snapchat messages. – The video gives my client an alibi, says defense attorney Victoria Holmen. Defense attorney Victoria Holmen sits next to the client, who is now having the case retried after he was convicted in the district court and the court of appeal. Photo: Roy Kenneth Sydnes Jacobsen / news In a screen recording the party attendee took on her own phone, she goes back three years in time in the message history on Snapchat. Then she stands at the alleged crime scene, two minutes before the offended woman asks for help via text message. It is this new video that has led to the resumption. According to the defender, it was taken at 22.12.26 and shows a woman dancing alone in front of the mirror in the bathroom. The text message was sent by the victim at 10.14pm to a friend who was at the party. The judgment states: “The victim is right-handed, but managed to write the following text message with his left hand”: 14 July 2020 10:13 p.m. Victim: Kan fu Plis kome The Commission believes that “the possibility that the text message was not sent at the time of the crime changes the prerequisites for the assessment of several evidentiary factors.” The woman has stuck to her explanation in two court cases, and the Eidsivating Court of Appeal had no doubt that the text message was sent by the victim while the abuse was taking place. Now it is precisely the doubt surrounding the text message that has led to the resumption. – Great burden In the judgment from the Court of Appeal, it is stated that “The chokeholds created such great fear that the victim did not dare to resist, while at the same time they sometimes made her physically unable to get away”. – The incident that my client has been exposed to, and the subsequent legal process, appeal processing and retrial has been an enormous strain for my client, says assistance lawyer Stine Rigmor Grimstad to news. Assistance lawyer Stine Rigmor Grimstad. Photo: The lawyers at Lilletorget – The consequences for her are fully documented. Media pressure further increases the burden, in addition to the danger that the actors’ expression of opinion in the media entails in terms of preliminary proceedings and influencing witnesses and judges. The victim will repeat his explanation during the Court of Appeal proceedings, not in the media in advance of the court proceedings, says Grimstad. Now the case comes before the court for the third time. The accused man also says the case has been difficult for him. – I have never been as far down as that review has made me. Yes, it has ruined my life. I have lost my entire reputation. I have lost trust in girls. I have lost early adulthood and time. I have been in prison for ten weeks too. It has just been a very difficult period, he says. His defense attorney reacts to the state prosecutor’s attempt to stop retrial. She was also refused by the court when she asked for an adjournment of the trial in order to obtain more electronic evidence. Per Sveinung Larsen / news – In everyone’s interest – It is a good defender’s work that we see the fruits of. It must be in everyone’s interest that we get the best possible information about the case, says Marius Dietrichson. The high-profile lawyer and defender led the defense group in the Norwegian Bar Association for many years. – I do not know this specific case, but my point is that word for word cannot be enough. Other evidence is needed for that. Here, it has been possible to find additional evidence that sheds more light on the case, and then the case must be handled accordingly. Dietrichson believes that the court more often in rape cases finds itself in a situation where there are convictions that are not correct. – I think that the percentage of errors in these cases are greater here than they are in other areas of the case, he says. The new video and SMS The public prosecutor’s office believes the media files do not help shed light on whether intercourse in the bathroom was voluntary. The police also believe that the time of the snapchat video can be shifted by using a filter. The Commission has no concrete evidence that such a shift has occurred in this case. The public prosecutor has stated that the times when the victim sent the SMS are not decisive anyway, as the “total evidence picture with witness statements in itself means that committed rape is proven with a clear preponderance of probability. The defender believes that the new video excludes the victim’s explanation that she should have sent a text message during the assault, and that the video gives the client an alibi. Struggle for credibility The public prosecutor has shown that the convicted person appeared “rarely unreliable in his explanation, in all details”. The Court of Appeal emphasized the victim’s sober and credible explanation. The man who is now bringing the case up again believes that “the system has been turned on its head.” It is not innocent until the opposite is deliberate. Rather, it is guilty until the opposite is deliberate, he says. The commission believes that the changed assumptions surrounding the text message “provide a reasonable possibility of acquittal if this had been presented to the sentencing court.” – A lot of opposition from the state attorney After a lot of work, the case has now been reopened. – What was a little surprising was that we received so much resistance from the public prosecutor that this was new evidence that could lead to something other than a conviction. They worked hard to stop the resumption of the case, says defender Victoria Holmen. The public prosecutor writes to news that “the prosecution does not want to answer the questions that news has asked because it will only help to legitimize an unbalanced presentation of the case”. – If the prosecution is to give a balanced presentation of the case, I have to go into several and not least other aspects of the case, and that would involve preliminary proceedings and the prosecution should not do that, writes state attorney Carl Graff Hartmann. State Attorney Carl Graff Hartmann. Photo: Kjell Olav Nordberg/news The case was initially dismissed on the basis of evidence by the police, but after a complaint to the public prosecutor, the Oslo public prosecutor’s office brought charges. The new video has not been tried in court yet, but because of the video, the case will be heard again in September. Dispute over time of video The prosecution believes the time of the video may have been shifted because filters can be applied later. The Commission has no concrete evidence that such a shift has occurred in this case. Nor can the witness remember having applied the filter. The defender believes they can demonstrate that the time is not shifted within the snapchat app itself, and that they can prove this in court. – They claimed that the file was not genuine. That the date and time were not true. Then we had to go a few laps which I had not expected we would have to do. Among other things, we used some energy to verify that the video is correct in minutes and seconds, says defender Holmen. The man accused of rape says that the house party had a separate Facebook group that the police could use to reach out to most of the party participants. – The system has been turned upside down. news has been in contact with the party participant who recorded the video in the bathroom. – Do you think the police could have done something more to find this video earlier? – Definitely. I wish I had found out earlier, says the witness to news. In the Commission’s decision, emphasis is only placed on the new video from the bathroom at 10.12 p.m., not other evidence in the case. – I think that now that I finally have proof that I am innocent, I should be acquitted. I really should have been without the evidence too. I would still be the same innocent man, and be in prison without this evidence, says the man. – The system has been turned upside down. It is not innocent until proven guilty. Rather, it is guilty until proven guilty, he says.
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Convicted of rape at a house party – then a new video appeared – news Norway – Overview of news from different parts of the country
