PALO ALTO — A domestic violence charge has been dismissed for a Stanford University professor who unwittingly drew wide attention to the case last year when his reported disappearance during a backpacking trip in Washington state caused a court delay.
Hunter Fraser, 45, had consistently asserted that an injury suffered by a former girlfriend two years ago was an accident resulting from horseplay between him and his then-9-year-old daughter at their Stanford home.
Tuesday, a judge granted a request from the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office to drop a related felony charge of corporal injury on a spouse or cohabitant.
“After a careful evaluation of all the evidence, including an accident defense, we concluded that there was insufficient evidence to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt,” the office said in a statement to this news organization Wednesday.
The criminal case against Fraser was characterized by a shifting narrative in which the reported victim initially told police the situation was an accident, then later reported an assault.
“This has been a devastating two-year ordeal,” Fraser said. “It’s deeply unsettling how a simple accident was manipulated into a narrative portraying me as an abuser, something I am not and never have been.”
He added: “I am relieved the record has finally been set straight and I am grateful to all those who supported me during this painful time.”
According to his attorney, Fraser was chasing his daughter and pushed open a door, not knowing that his girlfriend was behind it. The resulting force reportedly knocked her into a wall.
In August 2022, Fraser was charged with a misdemeanor that was later elevated to a felony, and he has argued that the violence allegation was made only after he and his girlfriend ended their relationship.
Last year, the criminal charge withstood a preliminary examination — a hearing in which a judge rules whether the evidence is strong enough to warrant a trial — and was proceeding toward trial until a dismissal motion filed by Fraser in September was evaluated by Judge Thomas Kuhnle over the past few weeks.
Fraser is a biology professor and medical researcher who runs the Fraser Laboratory at Stanford and is a member of Bio-X, Stanford’s interdisciplinary biosciences institute. He also works with the university’s Maternal & Child Health Research Institute, the Stanford Cancer Institute and the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute.
During a planned 40-mile backpacking trip in Olympic National Park in June 2023, Fraser said he slipped on a snowy slope and hit his head, leaving him disoriented as he walked 15 hours a day for two days, which included traversing a trail that wasn’t on his map.
That period overlapped with a June 9 court hearing that Fraser claims had been rescheduled prior to him going on his trip. He was still in the woods well past his scheduled return, which prompted a massive search by authorities that covered more than 70 miles of trails.
On June 11, Fraser reportedly made his way to a road where he encountered two hikers who gave …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment