Jamaica's Court of Appeal has thrown out the rape conviction of a St Thomas man because it adjudged that police investigators failed to gather key evidence. The appeal process had also been severely delayed because of bungling in the procurement of legal representation.

Albert Edmondson, farmer, of Mount Lebanus, St Thomas, had been in prison for four years before his appeal was heard. He had given notice 11 days after he was sentenced in March 2005 to 20 years' imprisonment that he would appeal the verdict. He was convicted of burglary, illegal possession of firearm and rape.

The court pointed out that it took over a year for the transcript of the proceedings to reach the Court of Appeal.

"It appears that there was some difficulty in assigning counsel on a legal-aid basis as the record shows that the matter was not listed for hearing until June 2007."

The court also pointed out that in June 2007, the case had to be taken off the list for further effort to be made to assign counsel.

Call for availability

In handing down the judgment this month, the Court of Appeal, comprising president Justice Seymour Panton and Justices Howard Cooke and Karl Harrison, said, "We take this opportunity to encourage more members of the legal profession to make themselves available to accept legal-aid assignments in the Court of Appeal."

The court referred to flaws in the police investigation and pointed out that although there were allegations that Edmondson had removed louvre blades from a dwelling house and replaced them, the windows had not been dusted for fingerprints.

Attorney-at-law Jack Hines, who represented Edmondson, submitted that the judge who convicted Edmondson had failed to consider adequately the issue of consent and the error impacted on Edmondson being found guilty of all the offences.

The court said there were certain aspects of the case which demanded the attention of the trial judge, particularly the question of the louvre blades. In allowing the appeal, the court said that because of shortcomings in the police investigations, specifically in the area of the fingerprints, it was not ordering a retrial.

Edmondson was convicted on March 10, 2005 of the offences, which allegedly took place on the night of September 23, 2003.

The complainant had testified at the trial that Edmondson, who she previously had known, entered through a window and raped her at gunpoint.

Love affair

Edmondson said in his defence that he and the complainant had been "stealing love on the side" since 1993. He said the complainant consented but it was because one of her children caught them in bed and the complainant feared that the child was going to tell her father, that she reported the matter to the police. He denied removing and replacing the louvre blades.

The court said the police were obliged to process the louvre blades for fingerprints because that would have been a conclusive way of determining consent. Reference was also made by the court to inexplicable differences in the complainant's evidence regarding the location of the firearm during sex and her hearing glass splinter. However, there was no evidence of broken glass. It was also the court's finding that it should not have been overlooked that the complainant said Edmondson used a condom.

barbara.gayle@gleanerjm.com