Montgomery v. Commonwealth (Va. Ct. App. Dec. 20, 2013) sets aside a man’s rape conviction, because the supposed victim had come forward (several years after the conviction) to say she made up the story and her admission led her to be convicted of perjury. An excerpt:
[...]In October of 2007, Elizabeth P. Coast, then seventeen, reported that when she was ten years old a neighborhood boy named “Jon” sexually assaulted her while the two were alone in her grandmother’s backyard…. Coast identified Montgomery in a photo lineup using his Hampton High School yearbook photo….
On June 23, 2008, … [the trial court] tried and convicted Montgomery in a one-day bench trial for the assault of Coast. Coast testified under oath that Montgomery had sexually assaulted her in 2000. She described the alleged assault in graphic detail. She said that she did not tell anyone what happened at the time of the assault because she thought her parents “would get mad” and she was “really embarrassed.” She explained that she decided to come forward seven years later because she thought she saw Montgomery at Wal-Mart….
Besides Coast, no other witnesses to the incident testified at Montgomery’s trial. Neither was any corroborating physical evidence that an assault occurred ever presented. The trial judge categorized this case as a “word against word situation.” In reaching his verdict, the trial judge concluded that Coast was more credible then Montgomery because she had “no motive whatsoever” to lie. The trial court then found Montgomery guilty of forcible sodomy, aggravated sexual battery, and object sexual penetration. On April 10, 2009, the trial judge sentenced Montgomery to 45 years in prison, with 37 years and 6 months suspended….
On November 1, 2012, Coast voluntarily made a videotaped statement at the Hampton Police Department. After consulting with counsel