Derek Achong

A 52-year-old car­pen­ter of Mar­aval, con­vict­ed of rap­ing a 13-year-old girl in 1997 and sen­tenced to 10 years in prison, has se­cured his free­dom af­ter the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) con­ced­ed his ap­peal over his con­vic­tion and sen­tence.

DPP Roger Gas­pard, SC, Deputy DPP George Bus­by and de­fence at­tor­neys Kei­th Scot­land and Asha Watkins-Montserin were high­ly com­mend­ed by Ap­pel­late Judges Mark Mo­hammed, Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh and Maria Wil­son for their work in Dex­ter Williamson’s ap­peal dur­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing on Thurs­day.

Williamson was con­vict­ed of statu­to­ry rape be­fore for­mer High Court Judge and cur­rent Ap­pel­late Judge Mal­colm Holdip in April 2019.

The nine-mem­ber ju­ry in Williamson’s case was al­lowed to de­lib­er­ate in his ab­sence af­ter he suf­fered a se­ries of heart at­tacks dur­ing the tri­al.

A bench war­rant was is­sued when Williamson failed to at­tend court af­ter the ver­dict. He was ar­rest­ed sev­er­al months lat­er and made to serve the sen­tence.

Scot­land and Watkins-Montserin filed an ap­peal in which they raised five grounds.

The grounds main­ly re­lat­ed to Jus­tice Holdip’s han­dling of the ev­i­dence of one of Williamson’s fe­male rel­a­tives, who claimed that Williamson al­so raped her but was not pros­e­cut­ed.

Williamson’s lawyers claimed that a sub­stan­tial mis­car­riage of jus­tice oc­curred, as the ev­i­dence was not rel­e­vant and high­ly prej­u­di­cial.

They con­tend­ed that Holdip mis­di­rect­ed the ju­ry on how to con­sid­er the fact that Williamson re­mained silent when con­front­ed by po­lice over the al­le­ga­tions made by the mi­nor. They al­so claimed that Jus­tice Holdip’s sum­ma­tion of the ev­i­dence in the case was skewed in favour of the pros­e­cu­tion.

Re­spond­ing to the sub­mis­sions in the case dur­ing the hear­ing, Bus­by ad­mit­ted that his of­fice felt it was un­able to de­fend the ap­peal.

Bus­by al­so said that it was not in the in­ter­est of jus­tice or pru­dent to pur­sue a re­tri­al, as the of­fence is al­leged to have oc­curred 25 years ago.

Wil­son in­di­cat­ed that she and her col­leagues came to the same con­clu­sion on their analy­sis of the case.

She praised Bus­by and Gas­pard for be­ing “true min­is­ters of jus­tice” by metic­u­lous­ly ex­am­in­ing the ev­i­dence and pro­vid­ing a forth­right re­sponse.

Williamson’s le­gal team was al­so com­mend­ed for their sub­mis­sions in the ap­peal, which clear­ly iden­ti­fied le­gal is­sues with the tri­al.

Mo­hammed al­so used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­ple­ment Gas­pard and Bus­by.

“A ju­rispru­den­tial and eth­i­cal leaf can be tak­en out of your book and Mr Gas­pard’s book,” Mo­hammed said.

“In my own ex­pe­ri­ence, I have nev­er known you to wilt to com­plex and tech­ni­cal ar­gu­ments,” he said when ad­dress­ing Bus­by.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the tri­al, the in­ci­dent was al­leged to have oc­curred on Oc­to­ber 29, 1997, when Williamson was 29 years old.

Williamson and an­oth­er man re­port­ed­ly went to the vic­tim’s home and at­tacked her while they were watch­ing tele­vi­sion to­geth­er.

The man who al­leged­ly helped Williamson re­strain the child was nev­er ar­rest­ed and pros­e­cut­ed.