The Guyana Court of Appeal yesterday ordered a retrial for businessman Kevin Jordan, after setting aside his conviction in 2015 for the rape of a seven-year-old boy.
Jordan was in 2015 found guilty of raping the child on November 7th, 2007 and sentenced to 18 years in prison. The businessman was released on $1 million bail in December of 2015 after his attorney had petitioned the court of appeal.
When the matter was called yesterday before Justices of Appeal Roxane George-Wiltshire, Franklin Holder and Rishi Persaud, the judges set aside the conviction and ordered a retrial.
Jordan’s attorney, Dexter Todd, had argued that the conviction was legally void and that the jury had departed from the minimum of two hours before they delivered the majority verdict. Todd further noted that the jury would have deliberated for approximately one hour and 20 minutes and would have rushed their verdict and therefore the trial judge should have rejected it.
The judges ordered that the matter be sent back for retrial at the next practicable sitting of the Demerara Assizes. Jordan will remain on $1 million bail.
In 2015 Jordan was sentenced to 18 years in prison after a 12-member jury had found him guilty of two counts of rape. The jury’s verdict was 11 to one in favour of guilty.
When the appeal was filed, it noted the grounds of appeal as the jury’s failure to deliberate on its verdict for a minimum of two hours as specified by law. It cited Section 158 of the Criminal Law Procedure Act 10:01, which provides that for non-capital offences, where there is a majority verdict, a jury must deliberate for at least two hours before arriving at its decision.
Jordan had been arrested in 2007 after four boys, between the ages of six and eight years old alleged that he molested them at his business place at High and Broad streets. The boys had been students of a nearby primary school.
