A California man has had his 378-year prison sentence overturned after a judge ruled his accuser made up evidence of sexual assault.
Ajay Dev, 58, was released last week after spending 16 years in state prison for 76 convictions of sexual assault on a minor and related charges.
He had been convicted of the serial rape of an adopted daughter named Sapna Dev who he and his wife helped bring to the US from his home nation of Nepal in 1998, when she was 15-years-old.
Superior Court Judge Janene Beronio said in her ruling that the then-teen girl had broken up with her boyfriend and accused her adoptive father of causing their split.
Sapna then told authorities that he raped her two or three times a week for three or four years before she moved out of their home.
Four witnesses who had not been contacted by Dev’s trial lawyers testified at a recent hearing that Sapna had told them that her accusations were lies or were motivated by her anger at him, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.
One of the witnesses said Sapna told him she made the accusations because she ‘was determined to return to the United States and needed to use the criminal charges to do that,’ Beronio said.
According to the Daily Democrat, Sapna had returned to Nepal at that time and was imprisoned there due to wrong information being printed on her passport. It was then she made the allegations and US authorities helped her with a new passport so she could return to the US.
Sapna was ultimately granted American citizenship in light of the case and her cooperation with prosecutors, according to CBS.
Critical evidence had been missed which stemmed from a phone call that cops had arranged between the two, the Chronicle reported.
The audio recording was not clear and the jury during Sapna’s original testimony in the 2000s heard it as her father saying: ‘You had sex with me when you were 18’.
Beronio said that an enhanced recording was now available which say he had actually told her: ‘You came with me after you were 18’.
The judge also said that another witness had testified that Sapna had given contradictory statements when she said she had aborted or miscarried three kids after from alleged pregnancies.
Beronio said that Sapna had frequently sent her adopted parents cards, texts and email expressing her love for them from 1999 up until 2004.
She added: ‘If jurors had heard that evidence, the result of this case could have and most likely would have been different.’
His lawyer Jennifer Mouzis had filed his habeas corpus petition seeking to have him freed in 2018.
Judge Beronio scheduled a hearing for June 13 for Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig to decide whether to retry Dev. Prosecutors could also appeal the ruling.
Deputy District Attorney Adrienne Chin-Perez contended during a hearing last week that Ajay Dev continues to pose a flight risk and a danger to the community.
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She also read a statement from Sapna, who wrote that she is ‘deeply afraid that Ajay will harm me.’
The judge’s decision ‘dismantles the DA´s case,’ said Patricia Pursell, a member of advocacy group that has held demonstrations in support of Dev, who is also his sister-in-law.
‘We have known from the beginning that Ajay Dev was wrongfully convicted,’ she told the Chronicle. ‘Judge Beronio was the first judge to really look closely at the evidence and read every document.’
Pursell also told CBS that when he was arrested his oldest son was two and that his wife was pregnant with another child. He was in prison when the child was born.
In a statement to the court seen by the outlet, Ajay said: ‘The absence of fatherhood has been the most difficult while doing time for a crime I never committed. You gave me a purpose to live. I cannot wait to be home with you.’
Mouzis said much of the prosecution’s evidence was based on racial and ethnic bias that would be illegal today under California´s Racial Justice Act, a 2021 law barring testimony that appeals to prejudice.
