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Wrongly Convicted Database Record
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Charge: |
Rape |
Sentence: |
4-1/2 years |
Years Imprisoned: |
3 |
Year Crime: |
2012 |
Year Convicted: |
2013 |
Year Cleared: |
2017 |
U.S. State or Country of Crime: |
United Kingdom |
County or Region of Crime: |
England |
City of Crime: |
Derby |
Result: |
Judicially Exonerated |
Summary of Case: |
"Danny Steven Kay was wrongly convicted on September 23, 2013 of raping a 16-year-old female -- when he was 20 -- in February 2012 on the sofa of his living room in Derby, England. Sixteen is the age of consent in England -- so she was of legal age to consent to sex with a man. The prosecution of Danny Kay was solely based on the testimony of his accusser. The young woman first alleged the rape to authorities on July 28, 2012. Danny Kay and the young woman had exchanged messages on Facebook, and his accuser had provided them to the police. There was nothing beneficial to Kay in those messages. Kay knew the messages were incomplete, but he was unable to find the messages in his Facebook account, and he contacted Facebook for the missing messages, to no avail. During his trial Kay acknowledged having sex with the young woman once, but his defense was it was consensual. Faced with a "She said, He said" case, the jury sided by a 10 to 2 majority with Kay's accuser and found him guilty. Kay was sentenced on November 11, 2013 to 4-1/2 years in prison. On March 23, 2016 Kay filed an application for leave to file an appeal -- almost 2-1/2 years late. On September 16, 2016 Kay's lawyer was able to recover from a Facebook archived folder in Kay's Facebook account, all the messages the young woman had sent him. A printout of the messages showed the girl had selectively deleted messages from her Facebook account, and provided the police with only the messages that didn't show she and Kay had consensual sex. The complete set of Facebook messages showed that no crime had occurred. Based on those Facebook messages the second ground of Kay's appeals was: "2) Fresh evidence in the form of Facebook messages are now available that go directly to A's credibility. Edited and misleading copies of the Facebook messages were adduced at trial." On December 21, 2017 the England and Wales Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) granted Kay's application to file his appeal out of time based in the interests of justice. The Court unanimously quashed Kay's conviction based on the new evidence that undercut the credibility of his accuser's testimony and the reliability of the edited Facebook messaging evidence presented to the jury. The Court's written ruling stated: "We have come to the conclusion that, in a case of one word against another, the full Facebook message exchange provides very cogent evidence both in relation to the truthfulness and reliability of A, who, in any event, gave a series of contradictory accounts about other relevant matters, and the reliability of the applicant's account and his truthfulness. ... We are satisfied that this further evidence does raise a reasonable doubt as to whether the applicant would have been convicted had it been before the jury, thus rendering the conviction unsafe. We also consider that there is, in the unusual circumstances of this case, a reasonable explanation for the failure to adduce the evidence at the trial." [Danny Steven Kay, [2017] EWCA Crim 2214] At the time of the appeals court's ruling Kay had served his sentence." |
Conviction Caused By: |
"Perjury by the alleged victim, and she destroyed exculpatory Facebook messages." |
Innocence Proved By: |
"On December 21, 2017 the England and Wales Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) granted Danny Kay's application to file his appeal out of time based in the interests of justice. The Court unanimously quashed Kay's conviction based on the new evidence that undercut the credibility of his accuser's testimony and the reliability of the edited Facebook messaging evidence presented to the jury. The Court's written ruling stated: "We have come to the conclusion that, in a case of one word against another, the full Facebook message exchange provides very cogent evidence both in relation to the truthfulness and reliability of A, who, in any event, gave a series of contradictory accounts about other relevant matters, and the reliability of the applicant's account and his truthfulness. ... We are satisfied that this further evidence does raise a reasonable doubt as to whether the applicant would have been convicted had it been before the jury, thus rendering the conviction unsafe. We also consider that there is, in the unusual circumstances of this case, a reasonable explanation for the failure to adduce the evidence at the trial." [Danny Steven Kay, [2017] EWCA Crim 2214]" |
Defendant Aided By: |
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Compensation Awarded: |
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Was Perpetrator Identified? |
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Age When Imprisoned: |
21 |
Age When Released: |
24 |
Sex: |
Male |
Skin/Ethnicity: |
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Information Source 1: |
Danny Steven Kay v R [2017] EWCA Crim 2214 (21 December 2017) (Quashing conviction based on new evidence of Facebook posts by Kay's accuser.) |
Information Location 1: |
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/2017/2214.html |
Information Source 2: |
"Derby rape conviction quashed after deleted Facebook messages found Appeal judges rule jury's guilty verdict unsafe, By Brian Farmer, Derby Telegraph (Derby, England), December 22, 2017" |
Information Location 2: |
http://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/news/derby-news/derby-rape-conviction-quashed-after-963938 |
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Innocents Database Created and Maintained by Hans Sherrer innocents@forejustice.org