Stoke-on-Trent taxi firm worker fails in bid to get rape conviction dismissedA taxi firm worker who raped a woman after a boozy party has failed to convince top judges that he was the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
Ikechukwu Felix Enueze, 38, insisted the victim, who had drunk alcohol and smoked cannabis, was a "willing participant" in a late night sexual tryst with him.
But the jury disbelieved him and Enueze, of Birch Street, Hanley, Stoke on Trent, was convicted of rape at the city's Crown Court.
He was put behind bars for seven-and-a-half years in September last year.
But judges at London's Criminal Appeal Court heard him argue that he was wrongly convicted.
Enueze claimed to have startling new evidence to put before the court that would clear his name.
He said that another woman had come forward, claiming to have received text messages from the victim in which she admitted that he had not raped her.
These texts were said to have been deleted by the witness at the request of the victim.
Rapist jailed for 'nasty and brutish' attack on drunken woman
But a written message to the court - supposedly from the witness - promised that she would give oral evidence about the contents of the deleted texts from memory.
But Mrs Justice Andrews said that the court had serious doubts about the validity of this "so-called fresh evidence" from the "female witness".
The woman's message "appeared to be written in the same handwriting as the appellant's note to the court," she observed.
The judge, sitting with Mr Justice Jeremy Baker, said there was "no reason" why the witness could not have given evidence before the trial jury.
"We are extremely sceptical that this is the evidence that this witness, were she called, would have given," added the appeal judge
"This application for leave to appeal against conviction is refused."
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http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/Stoke-Tr ... z48BUkvQol he wasn't reported as a taxi 'worker' at the time -
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