The appeal hearing of septuagenarian Michael Abrams who back in 2017 was sentenced to two life sentences after a jury convicted him of raping and sodomizing an eight-year-old girl, is set to be called on Monday August 23rd.
Abrams who began abusing the child at the age of six is of the view that not only was his verdict “unreasonable,” but that the sentence imposed against him was “manifestly excessive.” He wants the Court to set aside his conviction and sentence.
In his application before the Guyana Court of Appeal, he argues among other things that the trial judge failed to put his defence to the jury “fairly and /or adequately or at all” which he says resulted in a miscarriage of justice.
Added to that, he contends that the judge’s summation of the case was also unfair and unbalanced, citing that there had been a recitation of the testimonies of witnesses without providing the comparable guidance in assessing those testimonies.
The Appellant argues, too, that the trial judge failed to adequately and fairly direct the jury on what he said were inconsistencies and conflicts in the evidence and on the credibility of the prosecution witnesses.
On the point of the evidence presented, he says that the judge “wrongly admitted fresh, inadmissible hearsay” evidence which portrayed his character in a negative way, which he says was “extraneous and highly prejudicial” to him.
Abrams contends, also, that the judge misdirected the jury on the medical evidence and withdrew from the panel the possibility that injuries sustained by the child “may equally have been unrelated to sexual activity.”
He then goes on to complain of his sentence being severe and that in passing sentence, the trial judge failed to explore the possibility of ordering a probation report “and to take other relevant factors into consideration.”
The man says in his notice of appeal that what he wants the appellate court to do is reserve and/or set aside the jury’s verdict and for his conviction and sentence to be quashed and set aside.
His appeal will be heard on Monday by acting Chancellor Yonette Cummings-Edwards and Justices of Appeal Dawn Gregory and Rishi Persaud.
Abrams had been unanimously convicted on two counts of the rape of a child under the age of 16.
He first sexually penetrated the young girl, sometime between January 1, 2013 and January 19, 2016.
On the latter date, he was again found to have sexually molested the child whom he sodomized.
Following his conviction, Justice Simone Morris-Ramlall imposed the life sentences on Abrams ordering that he spends a minimum of 35 years in prison before being paroled.
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