Overview
- A three-justice panel of California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal vacated the former UCLA gynecologist’s 2022 convictions and sent the case back for a new trial.
- The court cited a note from the jury foreman flagging that Juror No. 15 may not speak English well enough to deliberate, which was not disclosed to the defense.
- Heaps had been sentenced in 2023 to 11 years in state prison after convictions on three counts of sexual battery by fraud and two counts of sexual penetration of an unconscious person.
- The original case involved 21 felony counts tied to seven women from 2009 to 2018, with jurors acquitting Heaps on seven counts and deadlocking on nine others.
- UCLA and the University of California previously agreed to settlements totaling nearly $700 million to resolve hundreds of related civil claims.