Jarryd Hayne sexual assault convictions quashed on appeal, retrial ordered

Former footballer Jarryd Hayne has had his convictions for sexually assaulting a woman quashed on appeal and will face a retrial.

Hayne, 33, was convicted last year of two counts of sexual intercourse without consent after he was found guilty of assaulting a woman, then aged 26, with his hands and mouth in September 2018 in an incident which left her bleeding from the genitals.

Jarryd Hayne pictured outside court last year.Credit: Louise Kennerley

A jury returned the verdicts in a second trial, after the first ended with a hung jury. Hayne was jailed for five years and nine months, with a non-parole period of three years and eight months.

On Monday, the Court of Criminal Appeal ordered that the convictions be quashed and Hayne face a retrial. He is due to make an application for bail in the District Court on Tuesday.

Lawyers for Hayne successfully argued that directions given to the jury in the second trial were “flawed in almost every possible way” when detailing the mental element of the offence and, as a result, Hayne should be retried.

The appeal also succeeded on a second ground, that it was an error to overturn a ruling from the first trial regarding the complainant’s messages with another person being admitted into evidence.

Two other appeal grounds were dismissed: that the jury verdict was unreasonable, and that it was an error to allow the jury to view the complainant’s “outburst” from the first trial.

In the outburst, the woman began to cry over a line of questioning and said “no means f---ing no” before exiting the court and calling Hayne a “f---ing piece of shit”.

Hayne’s barrister Tim Game, SC, argued last year that the trial judge’s jury directions were peppered with words such as “might” and “may”, which clouded the legal principles the jurors were required to rely on.

Mr Game said a retrial would mean Hayne faced a third trial, and it was open to Chief Justice Tom Bathurst, Justice Helen Wilson and Justice Ian Harrison to enter a verdict of acquittal instead.

Hayne’s trials heard he had been chatting to the woman on social media before he met her for the first time on September 30, 2018, when he took a taxi to her Newcastle home on his way back to Sydney from a buck’s party weekend.

When the woman realised he had left his taxi waiting outside, she was adamant she did not want sexual contact with him and told him so, she told the court. Despite this, she said, Hayne removed her jeans and assaulted her.

The trials examined the conflicting accounts of what happened in the 46 minutes Hayne was at the woman’s home, as well as messages and phone calls made before and after the incident.

In one message, the woman told a friend Hayne had been “so rough that blood started pouring all over the bed because he tore my vagina”. Hayne has denied assaulting the woman and said their consensual encounter ended when he injured her accidentally.

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