June 14, 2007	Thursday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 28, 1428

LONDON: A prominent English judge was cleared on Wednesday of charges he exposed himself to a woman on two separate occasions on trains in London last year. Lord Justice Stephen Price Richards, who sits in the Court of Appeal, was found not guilty of two counts of indecent exposure after a two-day trial at the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court in central London.

The 56-year-old father of three was charged with two counts of “intentionally exposing his genitals intending that someone would see them and would be caused alarm or distressed.” The charges related to two separate incidents involving a woman in her 20s on a train between Wimbledon, southwest London, where Richards lives, and Waterloo in central London on October 16 and 24 last year.

Due to the exceptional nature of the case, the trial was overseen by Timothy Workman, the most senior district judge for Magistrates' Courts in England and Wales, along with two lay magistrates.

The presiding judge cleared Richards, who had denied the charges, saying that the case came down to his word against the woman's.

During the trial Richards claimed that it was a case of mistaken identity, and at one point held up a pair of his boxer shorts as evidence that he could not have been the flasher, who the woman said wore no underpants.—AFP