A Judge Has Overturned the Guilty Verdict in the Mandi Gray Rape Case

York University grad student Mustafa Ururyar has been granted a new trial, after previously being convicted of raping fellow student Mandi Gray.

In a decision released Thursday morning, Superior Court Justice Michael Dambrot overturned Ururyar's conviction, while criticizing trial judge Marvin Zuker's decision-making process.

According to the Toronto Star, Dambrot criticized Zuker's verbose guilty decision as being "virtually incomprehensible." Zuker's judgment quoted liberally from feminist texts such as Maya Angelou's "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings" while also slamming the criminal justice system for its treatment of sex assault victims.

"It doesn't matter if the victim was out drinking, out alone at night, sexually exploited, on a date with the perpetrator, or how the victim was dressed. No one asks to be raped," Zuker said at the time.

Ururyar allegedly raped Gray in January 2015.

While sentencing Ururyar to the maximum of 18 months in jail for summary sex assault, Zuker described rape as "murder of the soul." He also took the unorthodox step of ordering Ururyar to pay $8,000 towards Gray's legal fees.

Dambrot said Thursday that Zuker erred in basing his decisions more on his beliefs about sexual assault than about the evidence at trial, according to reporters present. During the appeal hearing itself, which took place in March, Dambrot said Zuker "spent a lot more time talking about the rape myths than the evidence," and that the way to dispel rape myths is "by deciding cases correctly and appropriately, not by using your podium of reasons for judgment as a place for your own manifesto."

Zuker is now retired.

Outside court Thursday, Gray told reporters she's "horrified by this entire system" and slammed Zuker's analysis as "inadequate."

She previously told VICE she wasn't sure if would participate in a new trial.

"I got everything I wanted. I got back on campus. I'm feeling relatively OK about things. I don't really know what a new trial would prove," she said.

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