Scandals & Feuds ·
Ched Evans acquitted of rape at retrial
After the Court of Appeal quashed his 2012 conviction and ordered a new trial, a Cardiff jury returned a not-guilty verdict in October 2016. Evans had consistently denied the allegation.
On 14 October 2016, a jury at Cardiff Crown Court found footballer Ched Evans not guilty of rape after a two-week retrial. Six months earlier, the Court of Appeal had quashed his 2012 conviction and ordered the case to be heard again. The acquittal was a separate decision: the appeal had returned the allegation to a jury rather than ending the prosecution.
The case concerned an encounter with a woman at a hotel in Wales in 2011. Evans maintained that the sex had been consensual and denied rape. In April 2012, a jury at Caernarfon Crown Court convicted him, and he was sentenced to five years in prison. He lost an appeal that November and was released in October 2014 after serving half his sentence.
The route to a second trial went through the Criminal Cases Review Commission. In October 2015, the commission referred the conviction to the Court of Appeal after identifying new material. Its chairman, Richard Foster, described its possible significance cautiously: “In this case we have identified new material which was not considered by the jury at trial and which in our view might have assisted the defence.”
Foster said it was for the court to decide whether the information should affect the original verdict. At a two-day hearing, three appeal judges heard fresh evidence from Evans’s lawyers. In April 2016, they allowed his appeal and ordered a retrial.
“In summary, we have concluded that we must allow the appeal and that it is in the interests of justice to order a retrial,” Lady Justice Hallett said. The decision removed the conviction, but Evans still faced the rape allegation. That was resolved by the Cardiff jury’s not-guilty verdict in October.
Outside Cardiff Crown Court after the acquittal, solicitor Shaun Draycott read a statement on Evans’s behalf. Evans described the incident in North Wales in the early hours of 30 May 2011 as something that had changed his life “and the lives of others for ever”. He repeated his denial that a criminal offence had occurred and said he was “overwhelmed with relief”.
Evans thanked his lawyers, friends and family, singling out his fiancée, Natasha, for supporting him “in my darkest hour”. He also offered an apology without withdrawing his denial: “I wish to make it clear that I wholeheartedly apologise to anyone who might have been affected by the events of the night in question.”