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New trial ordered for Armstrong man

Long-term offender convicted of sexual assault and uttering threats wins appeal
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Update

Nearly five years after the offence was alleged to have occurred, Joseph Vance Caron walked out of Vernon Law Courts Monday as a free man.

Caron, born in 1969, was before Justice Alison Beames in Supreme Court after he successfully appealed his May 2015 conviction and was granted a new trial. However, during that trial’s second week before the courts Monday, March 11, the complainant failed to respond under cross-examination by defence lawyer Alexander Watt, and Crown prosecutor Neil Wiberg directed the court to enter a stay of proceedings.

Related: Stay of proceedings in Armstrong sexual assault trial

Original

A judge and jury will hear a new trial for an Armstrong man who successfully appealed his May 2015 conviction.

Joseph Vance Caron, born in 1969, was convicted for sexual assault, choking and uttering threats to cause death or bodily harm in connection with an incident in Armstrong in May 2014. He was sentenced in 2015 to six years and three months in jail and declared a long-term offender.

Caron cited three grounds for his appeal; two were thrown out by a trio of Court of Appeal judges, but the judges agreed unanimously that the third ground — that the sentencing judge misapprehended the evidence in his assessment of Caron’s credibility — had been met.

“The appellant was entitled to have his credibility evaluated in a manner untainted by misapprehensions of the evidence going to the heart of the judge’s reasoning process,” wrote Justice Gregory Fitch in his reason for granting the new trial.

“In my view, that did not occur in this case. As a consequence, a new trial is required.”

Caron requested the new trial be composed of a judge and a jury.

No date for the new trial has been set.