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Vanguard Analysis Part II: Ajay Dev's Appeal, Legal Arguments

Tuesday, March 26 Davis, CA. The Davis Vanguard a news agency covering local issues in Yolo County & Davis has released the second in a series of three articles on Ajay Dev's Case and his appeal.

"[Ajay's] appeal attacks both the facts of the case as well as the legal rulings used by Yolo County Judge Timothy Fall that the defense claims denied Ajay Dev of his right to a fair trial.  This includes, most notably, the inclusion of the alleged victim's interpretation of a 50-minute pretext call that meandered between English and Nepali, the judge's failure to properly instruct the jury on the law, and the judge's refusal to allow potentially exculpatory evidence.

This is the second of a three-part series.  The first part, Sunday's article, covers the defense's account of the facts of the case, including critical areas that the defense says the court got wrong in the original 2009 trial.  This second part will cover the defense's legal arguments.  And the third part will analyze the case in full.

In their legal arguments for the appeal, Mr. Dev's legal team alleges that he was "denied due process and a fair trial by the trial court's failure to instruct, sua sponte, on corpus delecti."

The defense argues that the prosecution relied on three pieces of evidence to convict Mr. Dev: the pretext call, the victim's allegations, and pornographic evidence "which was used to support the intent elements of the sex-related crimes and two separately charged pornography charges."

The defense notes that the pretext call involved a one-hour conversation between AV (the alleged victim) and Ajay, spoken in both English and Nepali.  While Ajay explicitly denied having sex and/or raping AV on this recorded call, there were two highly disputed statements in the call, spoken in Nepali, which the prosecution argued were admissions of sex with AV after she reached the age of 18 and, in closing, "relied on these statements in an attempt to persuade the jury that these 'admissions' somehow retroactively applied to ages 15 through 18 as well.""

Click here to read the complete article.