The Newfoundland and Labrador Court of Appeal has set aside the conviction of a former junior high school janitor on charges of sexually assaulting a girl under the age of 14 and ordered a new trial.

Peter Garfield Taylor was convicted in March 2011 at Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador of assaulting a young girl, although he was also found not guilty of the same charge against another girl.

The court found Taylor had assaulted a girl at his backyard shed in Conception Bay South. The complaints were not related to Taylor's former job as a custodian at Villa Nova Junior High.

"The trial judge made material errors in the manner in which he dealt with the evidence of Stephen Taylor [Peter Taylor's son] such that the guilty verdicts were rendered unreliable," according to an Appeal Court decision on June 13.

"Those errors with respect to the manner in which the trial judge dealt with Stephen Taylor's evidence are material in the sense that they could have affected the outcome of the trial. In the circumstances it would be unsafe to maintain the convictions," said the court's decision.

"It would not, however, be appropriate to enter acquittals …This is not to say that evidence which may be led at a new trial would necessarily be insufficient to ground guilty verdicts."

The Appeal Court handed down a split decision. One of the three judges who heard the appeal did not agree that the trial judge made material errors.

Last March, Taylor was sentenced to eight months of house arrest, but maintained he was innocent.

After his conviction, his lawyer filed a claim with the Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court of Appeal saying the evidence presented at trial did not support the guilty verdict.

The claim said that Justice Robert Fowler reversed the burden of proof. That is, the claim says Taylor was put in the position of having to prove he didn't do it, instead of the Crown having to prove he did commit the offence.

Fowler had called Taylor's alibi — which involved a claim that his son was nearby, working on a truck — a "clumsy lie."