A St John’s man who was retried for a rape he committed in 2016 has been found guilty for a second time.
Seven of eight jurors found that Leon Riley had in fact forced himself on a 15-year-old girl near Pensioners Beach.
He was first arrested and charged with the offence in April 2016. Riley was later convicted of rape and serious indecency by a jury and sentenced to 15 years in jail.
However, in November 2021, he was freed after the Eastern Caribbean Court of Appeal overruled his conviction.
The appellate court scrapped the conviction and sentence on the grounds that the prosecution relied heavily on testimonies of witnesses to whom the victim reportedly told of the offence at the first opportunity (the common law rule of recent complaint).
But Section 28 of the Sexual Offences Act No.9 of 1995 abolished the common law rules relating to evidence of recent complaint in sexual offence cases.
As a result, the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial which started last month under a new judge, Justice Ann-Marie Smith.
The minor told the court that Riley was a friend of her mother and one day, being in urgent need of assistance to print a project, she visited the man’s business place to do so.
She said he offered her a ride home to collect the electronic copy of her assignment and on their way back to his business to print it, he made a detour to Five Islands where he raped her.
Riley was represented by Wendel Robinson. They failed to convince the jury that the incident did not happen.
Riley is currently behind bars with a sentencing date yet to be determined.