World junior trial: Crown seeks new admission of Howden texts after inadmissible ruling [Video]

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Crown prosecutors are reattempting to have a text conversation initiated by a member of Canada’s 2018 world junior hockey team admitted as evidence after an Ontario judge’s earlier inadmissible ruling.

The arguments made inside a London, Ont., courthouse on Friday centre around Crown witness Brett Howden’s text conversation with then-teammate Taylor Raddysh on June 26, 2018 — days after the alleged incident at the heart of the sexual assault trial of five of their ex-teammates.

Howden and Raddysh are not facing charges.

Howden faced questions Thursday in a voir dire — essentially a trial within a trial — over that text conversation. In it, the Vegas Golden Knights forward describes some parts of the June 19, 2018, encounter, including a moment when he said one of the accused, Dillon Dube, slapped the female complainant on the buttocks.

“Dude, I’m so happy I left when all the …