Two years after he was found guilty of mutilating a sex partner’s genitals at a house party near Oliver, B.C.’s highest court has rejected Brian Douglas Louie’s appeal for a new trial.
The 36-year-old was convicted following trial in December 2012 of aggravated sexual assault and assault causing bodily harm in connection with an incident earlier that year when he bit off part of a woman’s labia during oral sex, then punched and kicked her.
After his conviction, Louie switched lawyers and applied for a mistrial, claiming his former lawyer was in a conflict of interest because he previously represented one of the Crown witnesses called at trial.
Provincial court Judge Meg Shaw later dismissed the application, a decision that was upheld Tuesday by the B.C. Court of Appeal.
Although Louie’s original lawyer, James Pennington, opened his cross-examination of Gregory Baptiste by explaining to the court how the two met when Pennington represented Baptiste six years earlier, Louie argued in his appeal that their prior relationship “raised a realistic risk of ineffective representation.”
“He says there was a real possibility that his counsel consciously or unconsciously soft-peddled his defence because he had earlier represented Mr. Baptiste,” Justice Kathryn Neilson wrote in her reasons for judgment.
“He also argues his trial counsel may have been less adversarial toward Mr. Baptiste due to a concern of disclosing confidential information gained through the earlier retainer.”
Neilson dismissed the appeal, however, since Baptiste “was a peripheral witness, whose evidence played no role in the trial judge’s decision to convict the appellant.”
She also found Pennington had “clearly disclosed” his relationship with Baptiste at trial and Louie “made no objection at the time,” nor did he point to specific evidence to show Pennington demonstrated bias towards Baptiste.
“In short, there is nothing to support the view that counsel’s prior relationship with Mr. Baptiste resulted in a conflict of interest, nor that it had a prejudicial impact on his representation of the appellant, or that it affected the reliability of the trial judge’s verdict or trial fairness,” Neilson concluded.
Louie is about a third of the way through his five-year sentence, which was handed down in January 2014, but reduced by just over two years due to enhanced credit for pre-trial jail time.
He admitted at trial he was on a cocaine and alcohol binge at the time of the incident, but claimed he performed oral sex on the victim at her request and only meant to deliver a “playful pinch” when he bit her.
“I’m not a vampire, or a zombie, it was purely accidental,” he testified.
The woman, whose name is protected by a publication ban, testified she suffered psychological problems as a result of the attack, plus physical scarring on her face and genitals.
