Crown, defence working on suitable sentence for man convicted of sex assaut
By Delon Shurtz on April 13, 2021.
LETHBRIDGE HERALDdshurtz@lethbridgeherald.com A Crown prosecutor and defence lawyer are preparing to tell a judge what they believe would be a suitable sentence for a Lethbridge man convicted of sexually assaulting a woman in his home while she was passed out.Ivan Iain Palmer was found guilty last month on one count of sexual assault, but the matter was adjourned to find a date when the lawyers can argue sentencing in front of Justice Vaughan Hartigan.
The matter was briefly spoken to Monday in Lethbridge Court of Queen’s Bench, then adjourned to June 18 for the sentencing hearing.
Hartigan found Palmer guilty March 31, and said the man was not always truthful when he testified at his sexual assault trial in February, and only tried “to paint himself in a better light with the court.”
During his trial the victim, who can’t be identified under a court-ordered publication ban, testified she and her girlfriend were at Palmer’s northside residence Nov. 2, 2019, where they visited, watched TV and drank heavily.
Eventually the woman became so intoxicated she had to be helped to a couch in Palmer’s bedroom, where she passed out and her girlfriend and Palmer’s wife covered her with a blanket.
The woman testified that when she woke up later, someone was touching her, and her pants and underwear had been pulled down to her ankles.
At first she thought she might have dreamed or imagined it, or that her girlfriend had touched her, but when her girlfriend denied it, the woman realized it must have been Palmer because he was the only person in the room other than herself.
Palmer denied touching the woman, and testified that sometime after she had been placed on the couch, he went to the kitchen to heat up some food, and returned to the bedroom where he sat on the corner of his bed near the couch and turned on the TV. He said the woman woke up with a panicked look on her face, and asked, “where am I, what’s going on?”
Lethbridge lawyer Greg White said there is reasonable doubt whether the woman actually felt anyone touch her, and if someone had, it could have been any of the other adults in the home, particularly the woman’s girlfriend. White suggested the complainant may even have pulled down her own pants.
“She was so drunk she could have done it herself,” he said during his closing arguments Feb. 9.
The judge concluded Palmer was the only one who could have assaulted the woman. Follow @DShurtzHerald on Twitter 4
-3
