By Latrishka Thomas
A man who was convicted more than four years ago of raping a teenage girl in 2016 is to be tried again for the same offence.
A jury has been empanelled and is ready to hear evidence in the trial set to start today.
The new proceedings came about after the appellate court ordered a retrial.
The incident allegedly occurred in April 2016 in the vicinity of Pensioners Beach where the defendant reportedly forced himself on a 15-year-old girl. He was convicted of rape and serious indecency before High Court Justice Keith Thom in February 2019 after a jury found him guilty of the serious criminal charges.
The judge then sentenced him to 15 years behind bars.
But in November 2021, the man was freed after the Eastern Caribbean Court of Appeal overruled his rape 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. Justice Ann-Marie Smith will hear the case.
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