5 years off for rapist cop — to be freed today

A POLICEMAN who was convicted of rape and got an additional five years when he went to the Court of Appeal, is walking out of jail today a free man after the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council found that the additional sentence was wrong in law. The Privy Council, in a judgment delivered on Tuesday, allowed the appeal of Earl Williams and reduced the 30-year term to 25 years. That means that Williams will be free today. The Privy Council comprised Lords Bingham, Hoffmann, Scott, Rodger, and Carswell. Julian Knowles appeared for Williams, while James Dingemans QC represented the State. Williams was convicted before Justice Clebert Brooks in the San Fernando High Court on July 18, 1988.

He was found guilty of raping a woman in a police station at La Brea on the night of July 16, 1984. He was sentenced to 25 years in jail, ordered to receive 20 strokes with the birch, and to be kept in solitary confinement for one month during the first year of his imprisonment. His earliest date of release is March 17, 2005 — today, were it not for the fact that the Court of Appeal increased the sentence of imprisonment to one of 30 years. Williams appealed to the Privy Council against the order of the Court of Appeal which increased his sentence. On July 27, 1988, Williams applied to the Court of Appeal for leave against his conviction and sentence. The matter was heard before the Court of Appeal comprising then Chief Justice Clinton Bernard, Justice Roger Hamel-Smith, and Justice Lloyd Gopeesingh in June 1992, but judgment was not delivered until May 1994.

The written judgment of the court, delivered by CJ Bernard, dealt in detail with the conviction and Williams’ grounds of appeal, all of which were rejected. The order of the Court of Appeal, addressed to the Commissioner of Prisons, stated that the court had increased Williams’ term from 25 years to 30 years to take effect from the date of conviction. In the judgment, Lord Carswell said the Court of Appeal had to take a series of steps to vary a sentence. It must consider the sentence imposed by the trial judge and form the view that a different sentence should have been passed. “At that stage, if leave to appeal has not earlier been given, it must give leave to turn the application for leave into an appeal.