A Toronto police sergeant was acquitted of two counts of sexual assault by a provincial judge for “obvious” reasons, the officer’s lawyer argued at an appeal hearing Friday: “He didn’t believe the two complainants.”

Gary Clewley, who is representing Sgt. Christopher Heard, urged an Ontario Superior Court judge Friday to dismiss the Crown’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling, which last year found the officer not guilty of sexually assaulting two women in separate alleged on-duty incidents.

“While various arguments are advanced for why that finding of not guilty ought to be reversed, essentially the Crown is unhappy with the result and it wants another opportunity to put (Heard) on trial on the same evidence,” Clewley wrote in arguments filed in advance of Friday’s hearing, before Justice Tamarin Dunnet.

Heard, who has been suspended with pay from the service since 2016, sat quietly in court Friday, the first day of the appeal and nearly a year since Ontario Court Justice Russell Otter acquitted him of sexually assaulting two young women in the autumn of 2015.

The women, both in their 20s at the time and whose identities are covered by a publication ban, came forward independent of one another and alleged Heard, 47, picked them up when they were alone in the Entertainment District, offered them a ride home, then groped them once they were alone in the police vehicle.

In both cases, Heard disabled the in-car camera, which would have captured activity within the vehicle. Doing so runs contrary to his training and Toronto police procedure.

Heard admitted on the stand that he picked the women up, but adamantly denied inappropriate touching, which, they alleged, consisted of him putting his hand on each woman’s upper thigh.

Otter found Heard’s testimony lacked reliability and credibility, but said inconsistencies in the women’s accounts gave him “reasonable doubt as to whether the sexual assault occurred.” Accordingly, he acquitted Heard.

But Crown lawyer Philip Perlmutter alleges Otter fell into a “pattern of cascading errors” when he found Heard not guilty. That includes failing to adequately take into consideration the “improbability of coincidence” that two strangers would make such similar allegations; they had nearly “identical” evidence, Perlmutter said.

The error “might reasonably have had a bearing on the outcome,” Permutter told Dunnet.

In written arguments filed before the appeal, he said there was no other logical explanation how “complete strangers” could make such similar allegations “unless they actually occurred.”

Clewley disagreed, saying it is “illogical” to suggest that unreliable evidence could be relied upon to corroborate other testimony, when both are found to be lacking.

“Unreliable evidence can’t assist other unreliable evidence,” Clewley told Dunnet.

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Heard is still facing professional misconduct charges in connection to the two incidents, under Ontario’s Police Services Act, including for allegedly failing to record his interaction with one of the women in his police notes, only writing them up after he learned she’d filed a complaint against him.

Appeal arguments concluded Friday. Dunnet reserved judgment on her decision and no date was set for its release.