NJ- Sexual assault conviction is tossed

8-21-2008 New Jersey:

Roxbury resident admits child abuse

After nearly 20 years as a sex offender, William Gil no longer is one.

A judge last month threw out the Roxbury man's conviction for sexually assaulting a teenager after the woman, now 38, testified she lied at his 1988 trial under pressure from the prosecution. Gil, 57, then pleaded guilty to child abuse, admitting he had touched her breasts.

Gil hopes shedding his sex offender status will help win his battle against deportation to Colombia, his attorney, Jerard Gonzalez said. Gil came to the attention of Immigration and Customs Enforcement a few years ago while renewing his green card, Gonzalez said. The judgment of conviction wrongly indicated that Gonzalez had been convicted of sexually assaulting a child under the age of 13.

"This was a case where a guy's life was turned upside down many years later," said Michael Koribanics, Gil's co-counsel in the Morris County case.

The woman first recanted at Gil's deportation hearing in November 2005. In 1988, she claimed Gil had digitally penetrated her in 1986, but 17 years later, she said she lied because she thought the prosecution wanted her to.

"They basically were trying to get information out of me that just wasn't there. So I felt like I had to make things up to make them happy," she said, according to a transcript of Gil's deportation hearing.

But the Morris County Prosecutor's Office challenged that assertion, saying in court papers her recantation "was suspect and untrustworthy." The prosecution pointed out she had written a letter to Gil's wife describing what Gil had done to her before police knew of the allegations.

At the deportation hearing, the woman said Gil had apologized to her and she forgave him, and that she didn't want him deported because it would hurt his family. The married father of three is a self-employed trucker who has been a permanent resident of the U.S. since 1982, according to Gonzalez and court records. He also goes by the name Gil Londano.

An immigration judge agreed to let Gil remain in the U.S., but that ruling was overturned last summer by the Board of Immigration Appeal and he was jailed, court records showed. The case is under appeal in the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, Gonzalez said.

Gil was released last Thursday from the Hudson County Correctional Facility, the day before he came to Morristown to be sentenced to time served on the child abuse charge.

"This is a 1988 case in which the victim recanted her trial testimony. In the interest of justice, we accepted the guilty plea of the defendant for a Title 9 offense of child abuse," Morris County Prosecutor Robert A. Bianchi said.

A judge in 1989 sentenced Gil to four years in state prison, but he was allowed to remain free while he appealed the verdict. The conviction was upheld, though the appellate judges were critical of the prosecution. A judge in 1991 altered his sentence to five years of probation, in part because the woman had asked that he not be jailed. ..News Source.. by MARGARET McHUGH