A British man who was convicted in a rape case and spent over three years in prison has been freed after his sister-in-law found deleted Facebook messages that established his innocence.
Danny Kay, aged 26, a resident of Derby in England, was sentenced to prison in 2013 after a woman accused him of rape after a sexual encounter the previous year .
Evidence that was key to his conviction were several Facebook messages that seemed show him as apologizing for sex without the consent of the woman .
However, it turned out that the woman had deleted the messages selectively in order to prove her version of story.
This came to light when Kay’s sister-in-law, Sarah Maddison uncovered an archive of the messages on his Facebook account which helped him get the conviction overturned. Maddison said that it had taken her “a minute to find them” and asked how trained police officials could miss it.
Kay had strenuously denied the rape charges against him to the police.
Appeals Court Finds Police Relied On Misleading Evidence
According to a Daily Mail report, England’s Court of Appeal in London ruled that police had relied on an “edited and misleading” version of the Facebook conversation that was provided by the complainant a few weeks after she claimed that she had been raped by Kay .
Kay stated that his liberty was as a result of a conversation with a fellow inmate who told him that the Facebook messages he thought were irretrievable were in fact recoverable.
Kay then requested Maddison to log in to his account to retrieve the messages.
The case has its origins in 2012 when Kay and the complainant aged then around 17 had a casual sexual encounter, which he said was consensual but she said was not.
Edited Messages Reveal A Different Picture
During the trial the accuser said that there had been little contact after the sex but the full version of Facebook messages proved otherwise and also showed that the sex was consensual.
- One edited message read “sorry,” which implied forced sex had taken place. However the complete version of the messages showed that the apology was a response to the woman who had asked him why he seemed to be ignoring her. Her response “Dnt [sic] be” was also deleted.
- Another factor that went into his conviction were messages that had implied that Kay had misled the woman regarding his age, when in fact he had not, as revealed by the messages recovered later.
- Further in messages sent after the sexual encounter Kay asked his accuser for her phone number as he’d lost it. She had not only supplied it, but also sent four kiss emojis, all of which she deleted subsequently.
The judges in the appeals court ruled that the recovered messages undermined the woman’s account and supported Kay’s version.
Derbyshire Police has said that would review its investigation “to find out whether lessons can be learned.”
