A Caithness man has been acquitted of charges of stalking and sex assault by a court in Inverness.
A jury took just over an hour to return a verdict of not proven on two charges of sexual assault and one of stalking against 58-year-old Robert Robinson.
A charge of causing another to hear a sexual communication without their consent was withdrawn by the crown.
On the final day of the trial jurors heard speeches from fiscal depute Robert Weir and defence solicitor Graham Mann before receiving legal directions from Sheriff Margaret Neilson.
Crown’s ‘common thread’ claim
Mr Weir told the jurors that there was a “common thread” running through the evidence they had heard and that the sexual assault charges, which related to incidents 2015 in one case and in 2018 and 2019 in another, shared characteristics.
He also told them: “The law doesn’t say women have to fight, to resist – they just don’t have to give their consent, that is what the law is.”
But Mr Mann, who led no evidence in his client’s defence, said that Mr Robinson’s position was simply that the events described by witnesses had not taken place.
Assaults ‘never happened’
“I’m asking you to accept today that they never happened,” he told the jury.
Previously the jury had heard two women claiming to have been on the receiving end of unwanted sexual attention from the then taxi driver.
They had also heard from a forensic expert who told the court that a DNA sample “greater than one billion times more likely” to have come from Mr Robinson than anyone else, taken from one of the women’s breasts, could have got there in a number of ways, including transfer from an item passed between the two.
“The forensic scientist has told you is that it was just as likely that the DNA deposit came by a transfer,” Mr Mann told the court.
He later reminded the jurors of his client’s position that he had: “Turned up on that day, didn’t go into the house and handed a bag over.”
The jury was unanimous in its acquittal of Mr Robinson, of Trostan Terrace, Thurso on one charge of sexual assault and the charge of stalking.
The not proven verdict on the charge of sexual assault with intent to rape was reached by majority.
