KEY POINTS:
Jurors were asked yesterday to both accept and reject inconsistencies in the evidence of a drug-addicted Christchurch prostitute who was choked unconscious and sexually attacked four years ago.
A suspended police recruit, who has interim name suppression, admitted picking up Jaqueline Howat in the Manchester St red-light district early on March 15, 2003.
But the 33-year-old has denied attacking her.
Crown prosecutor Philip Shamy told the Christchurch District Court inconsistencies in the woman's evidence were understandable, given the serious injuries she received in the attack in her Stanmore Rd flat and that she had been "put through the wringer" answering questions from the witness box.
But defence lawyer James Rapley asked jurors to contrast her "drugged-up" account of what happened with the "unfaltering" evidence in his own defence from the man charged with strangling and sexually violating her.
Ms Howat's courtroom identification of the accused was "risky and fraught with danger", Mr Rapley told the jury of eight women and four men. "She's mistaken."
Fingerprints taken during a training exercise at the Royal NZ Police College in Porirua in September 2005 are alleged to have linked the recruit to the attack on Ms Howat.
Last week, on the second day of the trial, Ms Howat took the unusual step of asking Judge Murray Abbott to lift the permanent namesuppression order that automatically appliesto the victims of sex crimes.
Yesterday, Judge Abbott told the jury that after hearing legal argument in chambers on Monday he had amended one of the charges to remove the element of rape.
The accused police recruit denies one charge of wounding Ms Howat with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, one of sexually violating her and an alternative charge of assaulting her with intent to commit sexual violation.
In his closing address yesterday afternoon, Mr Rapley said there were "very real problems" with the Crown's case.
He criticised the police investigation which, he said, failed to follow up DNA clues pointing to another possible assailant.
Having established a "firm suspect" through the fingerprints, police adopted a "blinkered approach" that was "totally unsatisfactory".
A "calm, dispassionate analysis of the evidence" would lead the jury to the conclusion the accused was not guilty.
Earlier, Mr Shamy urged the jurors to disregard Ms Howat's inconsistencies.
"She's not on trial," he told them.
Giving evidence in his own defence under oath, the accused admitted picking up Ms Howat and being taken back to her flat. But he said he left after paying her for consensual sex and knew nothing of the attack that morning.
He said he had some sympathy for Ms Howat who must have had a "horrible" experience.
"I did not do that to her," the police recruit said. "I could not do that to her."
- NZPA
