Legal teams for a group of men jailed for gang raping three women in Newcastle have argued their guilty verdicts were “an unsafe and unsatisfactory verdict”, and witnesses were unreliable.<\/p>\n
Last year brothers Maurice Hawell, 31, and Marius Hawell, 24, and friend Andrew David, 31, were convicted of multiple counts of aggravated sexual assault and aggravated sexual touching in company.<\/p>\n
The trio’s lawyers have spent the past two days challenging the men’s convictions and sentences in the Court of Criminal Appeal.<\/p>\n
An argument around an “unsafe” verdict alleges the jury’s guilty verdict was unsatisfactory and should be overturned.<\/p>\n
The offences occurred during a bucks weekend in February 2022.<\/p>\n
The men had travelled to Newcastle and stayed in an Airbnb for the weekend.<\/p>\n
Two of the women were 18 at the time and the third was 19.<\/p>\n
‘Callous and degrading’<\/p>\n
In sentencing, Justice Gina O’Rourke said the men engaged in a “pack mentality” and treated the women in a “cold, callous, degrading and criminal way”.<\/p>\n
Maurice Hawell was sentenced to 14 years in prison with a non-parole period of eight years and six months.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Maurice Hawell is one of the men appealing his conviction and sentence. (ABC News: Ethan Rix)<\/p>\n
Andrew David was sentenced to 13 years in prison with a non-parole period of seven years and nine months.<\/p>\n
Marius Hawell was sentenced to nine years in prison with a non-parole period of five years and five months.<\/p>\n
The appeal<\/p>\n
The three men appealed on the grounds the verdicts were unsafe and victims unreliable.<\/p>\n
The men’s barristers also claimed the jury could have been led to misinterpret their state of mind during the bucks weekend.<\/p>\n
The appellant judges are Justices Stephen Free, Peter Hamill and Belinda Rigg.<\/p>\n
Crown Prosecutor Bret Hatfield SC today elaborated on the claim about “state of mind”.<\/p>\n
“The crown says state of mind exists over a 24-hour period and the men were looking for women in nightclubs,” Mr Hatfield said.<\/p>\n
Mr Hatfield added “there was a clear a break when the men went and had breakfast and went sightseeing” in Newcastle.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The court heard it was Andrew David’s bucks party. (ABC News: Ethan Rix)<\/p>\n
The men’s barristers also took aim at the credibility of witnesses on the Friday night and their understanding of consent.<\/p>\n
Mr Hatfield today told the judges there should not be expectations about “how complainants in sexual assault matters should behave”.<\/p>\n
‘Inconsistencies’<\/p>\n
He said inconsistencies in their evidence “largely relates to the number of people walking back to the apartment [where they were staying]” and “how many men were outside the room” when they were being sexually assaulted.<\/p>\n
“They have visceral and graphic detail that is hard to make up and embellish,” Mr Hatfield said.<\/p>\n
He said that inconsistencies were “relevant of course, but they were not significant”.<\/p>\n
The presiding trial judge ruled against separate trials due to the context of the evidence.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The men met two of the women at Newcastle’s Cambridge Hotel. (Supplied: Vision Collective)<\/p>\n
Barristers for all three men rejected claims of a “joint criminal enterprise” raising concerns the jury was not given adequate directions about the concept.<\/p>\n
A joint criminal enterprise exists where two or more persons commit criminal activity and each is held to be criminally responsible for the acts of another.<\/p>\n
Justices Free, Hamill and Rigg reserved their decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Legal teams for a group of men jailed for gang raping three women in Newcastle have argued their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87415,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[65226,65227,65225,1110,65228,65222,43,65224,65223,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-87414","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-aggravated-sexual-assault","9":"tag-aggravated-sexual-touching","10":"tag-andrew-david","11":"tag-appeal","12":"tag-bucks-weekend","13":"tag-gang-rape","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-marius-hawell","16":"tag-maurice-hawell","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-top-news","19":"tag-top-stories","20":"tag-topnews","21":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}