Jarryd Hayne WINS sexual assault conviction appeal and will face a retrial 

Disgraced NRL player Jarryd Hayne has sensationally won his last-ditch attempt to have two rape convictions overturned and will face retrial.

The 33-year-old was jailed for a maximum five years and nine months in May last year for allegedly raping a young woman in Newcastle in September 2018 on the night of the NRL Grand Final.

The NSW Court of Criminal Appeal heard his conviction challenge in November, when Hayne’s lawyers argued for an acquittal or a third trial.

On Monday morning, Chief Justice Tom Bathurst and Justices Helen Wilson and Ian Harrison ordered the convictions be quashed.

He will face the District Court for directions on February 18. 

Hayne (pictured) has continually stressed that the sexual encounter was consensual 

Last year, Hayne was found guilty of two charges of sexual intercourse without consent.

He was found not guilty of the more serious alternative charges of aggravated sexual intercourse without consent inflicting actual bodily harm, which would have carried an even longer sentence. 

‘I’d rather go to jail knowing I spoke the truth than be a free man living a lie,’ he said outside court following his guilty verdict in March. 

The woman allegedly suffered injuries during the sexual encounter with Hayne and required medical treatment.

In November, his barrister Tim Game SC put forward four appeal grounds including contending the jury was given ‘profoundly wrong’ legal directions.

Hayne put together one of the finest individual seasons in rugby league history in 2009, leading the Eels to the grand final and winning the Dally M medal as the game’s finest player

Justice Helen Syme’s directions of law were ‘flawed in almost every possible way’, he argued.

While prosecutor Brett Hatfield admitted the language could have been tighter, he said ‘perfection is not required’.

Another ground was the overruling of evidence admitted into the first trial, which Mr Game said explained the complainant’s state of mind in her ‘abiding interest in having sex with Jarryd Hayne’.

He also disputed a ‘highly prejudicial’ outburst from the woman in the first trial when she yelled ‘no means no’ under cross-examination, played before his second jury and likely to bring about a ‘very sympathetic response’.

But the Crown argued the woman appeared very deflated and flat directly after this exchange, and her monotone responses would be incongruent without viewing the preceding moments. 

Hayne (pictured with wife Amellia Bonnici) launched the appeal against his two sexual assault convictions in November

Both trials were told Hayne had left his friend’s bucks party to meet up with the woman and allegedly forcibly performed oral and digital sexual intercourse on her.

‘I do not accept the offender did not know or did not hear the victim telling him she did not want to have sex with him,’ Judge Syme said. 

In the days leading up to the alleged assaults, Hayne and the woman had communicated over Instagram, Snapchat and texts. ‘You are absolutely gorgeous,’ she told him in one exchange.

Hayne claimed when the pair met in person they kissed on the woman’s bed. The woman said she withdrew consent to sex. 

She allegedly suffered injuries during a sexual encounter and required medical treatment.

In text to a friend after the incident, the victim described how she stopped wanting to have sex with Hayne after learning he had a taxi waiting outside to take him back to Sydney.