A former Port Coquitlam parks worker and Pitt Meadows councillor lost his appeal of a sexual assault conviction.
Today (Tuesday), the BC Court of Appeal dismissed David Murray’s request to overturn the 2017 conviction in Port Coquitlam provincial court.
Judge Deirdre Pothecary found Murray guilty of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in a PoCo shop he owned in 1992.
He received a nine-month jail sentence. Murray has been on bail pending the Court of Appeal decision.
In their judgement at the Vancouver courthouse, justices Gregory Fitch, Patrice Abrioux and Nicole Garson struck down six grounds of appeal put forward by Murray’s defence lawyer, David Ferguson.
They ruled Pothecary “did not err in her approach to the assessment” of Murray’s credibility nor did she misapprehend the evidence. As well, the provincial court judge didn’t subject Murray’s evidence to a higher level of scrutiny than the complainant’s, they wrote.
They ruled she did not discredit Murray’s testimony because he relied on the Crown’s disclosure nor did the prosecutor elicit the details of the victim’s prior statements to other people about the offence.
“Consequently, there is no risk that the judge erred by relying on the supposed consistency with which the complainant related her account over time as a circumstance bolstering her credibility,” they wrote.
Ferguson told The Tri-City News Tuesday he had yet to speak with Murray about the conviction appeal ruling and whether he would proceed with an appeal of the prison sentence.
In January 2018, Murray quit as a Pitt Meadows city councillor and retired from his municipal job in PoCo, which he had held for 16 years.
Pitt Meadows council lobbied the provincial government to introduce legislation that would compel a municipal politician convicted of a serious crime to resign.
