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Appeal Court orders retrial for man convicted of rape, jailed for 40 years
Kaieteur News – The Court of Appeal on Tuesday ordered a retrial of a rape case involving Julius Branker who is currently serving a 40-year-jail sentence on the grounds that there were several errors made in the trial.
Branker was jailed in 2018 after he was found guilty of breaking into a woman’s house and raping her at knifepoint. In a bid for freedom, he had moved to the Court of Appeal to have the conviction and sentence quashed, arguing, among other things, that his conviction is unsafe and that the sentence is excessive.
Delivering the decision, Chancellor of the Judiciary, Justice Yonette Cummings-Edwards, who presided over the case along with Justices Dawn Gregory, Rishi Persaud said the jury was only given adequate direction on how to address evidence given via the identification parade.
Among other things, the Appeal Court Judge said that the complainant in the case had identified Branker as a man she knew from around Linden and saw on Court round-up; the TV news programme that broadcasts stories about persons charged in Court.
Rape convict: Julius Branker
The judge noted this statement was prejudicial and could have influenced the decision of the jury.
Additionally, the judge noted that the Appeal Court found that the jury was not given sufficient direction on how to adequately deal with Branker’s defence.
Branker, who resided at Linden, Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice), prior to his incarceration, was found unanimously guilty of raping the woman on February 15, 2014.
The prison sentence was handed down by Justice Simone Morris-Ramlall. The evidence detailed that armed with a knife, Branker broke into the victim’s house in the wee hours of the morning while she was lying in bed with her 18-month-old toddler and committed the act in the child’s presence while threatening to kill her with the knife.
But despite the jury’s verdict, Branker maintained his innocence, stating, “I am not guilty of this case.”
The court had heard that the victim was struggling to deal with the trauma which flowed from the horrific ordeal. “Honestly, I forgive him but you can’t be hurting women so. I get nightmares, I am always shaking.
Before imposing sentence, Justice Morris-Ramlall said that she had considered the nature of the offence committed at the hands of Branker, who broke into the privacy and comfort of the woman’s home in the wee hours and violated her. The judge recalled that the child eventually ended up under the bed, though she said it was not stated at the trial how the infant got there.
Justice Morris-Ramlall said that the convict had no regard for the verdict of his peers, nor did he show any remorse, either personally or through his attorney.
However, Branker is claiming that the trial judge made a number of errors in law, which effectively renders his conviction unsafe, and as such, it should be set aside.
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