Forty-nine-year-old ex-gambler Ray Thomas, of Laing Avenue, Georgetown, will have to serve out his 18-year jail sentence after Judges at the Appeal Court denied his challenge on Thursday.
The convicted prisoner has been incarcerated since September 2015 for rape committed on an eight-year-old girl, three years prior.
After consideration of legal arguments by Thomas’s attorney, George Thomas; Chancellor of the Judiciary Yonette Cummings-Edwards, Appellate Justice Rishi Persaud and additional judge from the High Court, James Bovell-Drakes determined that they did not find that trial judge Dawn Gregory erred in principle when sentencing Thomas.
“It is only when a sentence appears to err in principle that this court will intervene; the section under which the appellant was charged carries life imprisonment … it is within the discretion of the Judge having heard the evidence to impose a sentence that he or she sees fit according to the circumstances of each case,” the acting Chancellor explained.
Chancellor Cummings-Edwards, citing case law, also observed that sentences could serve the public interest by acting as a deterrent to others who may potentially commit such crimes. After in-chamber deliberations, the Judges returned and disclosed that they were unable to find that the sentence was excessive.
As such, the appeal was dismissed – an announcement which caused the prisoner’s elderly mother to break down in tears. She had to be escorted outside the courtroom.
The convicted man had been unanimously found guilty by a 12-member jury of 10 women and two men. The panel of his peers determined that Thomas sexually penetrated the eight-year-old girl’s vagina with his two fingers during the month of February 2012.
It was reported that Thomas conducted his own defence after he denied committing the crime at his arraignment. Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Dionne McCammon appeared for the State.
