Former JDF soldier gets reduced sentence for rape

The Court of Appeal has set aside the mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years' imprisonment imposed in 2018 on former Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) soldier Craig Dubidah for rape.

A sentence of 14 years and six months was instead imposed and he will now be eligible for parole after serving nine years and six months.

Dubidah was found guilty by a jury in November 2017 of forcible abduction and rape. He was given a suspended sentence for forcible abduction.

Evidence was given at his trial in the St Catherine Circuit Court that on the night of October 21, 2014,  Dubidah, who was a serving member of the JDF, went to a bar along with two other men and ordered drinks. Dubidah and one of the men were known to the complainant who was the bartender.

After the complainant closed the bar, she was walking home when Dubidah drove up and offered her a ride and she accepted. When she gave him the direction to her home, he drove in the opposite direction.

He instead drove to his home and when she refused to exit the car, he lifted her out and took her to a room where he raped her. After Dubidah left the room, one of the men who was with him began to rape her.  Dubidah on his return reprimanded the man for raping her and the man left through a window.

While she was walking home after the ordeal, the complainant said Dubidah drove alongside her, offering her a ride home and she refused. He then stopped the car, took her up and placed her inside the car.

She said he explained to her that he did not know what the other man was doing in the room and promised to deal with it. The complainant made a report to the police and Dubidah was arrested and charged.

Dubidah had given an unsworn statement at his trial that he knew the complainant before and she had consented to being intimate with him.

He said he was in the bathroom when one of the men raped the complainant and he reprimanded him for doing so.

In the grounds of appeal filed, the court was asked to overturn the convictions, based on the judge's failure to direct the jury properly on previous inconsistent statements.

It was argued that the defence counsel who represented the appellant at his trial had failed “to fully suggest the case for the defence, to wit, that the complainant and the appellant had engaged in consensual activity prior to the occasion complained of and which was articulated in the unsworn statement.

The court held that no substantial miscarriage of justice had actually occurred.

Commenting further the court said “in the circumstances, we cannot say that the complainant would have responded to the omitted question in any way different than she did when she was asked about going to the appellant's home “on a night” in September 2014 and what transpired.

"Neither are we satisfied that there was any real possibility of an acquittal had the allegation of prior consensual sex been put to the complainant. We are also of the view that defence counsel's conduct of the defence was not so extreme as to have resulted in a denial of the process, or left the process completely bereft of the essential requirements of the appellant's defence as to render the conviction unfair.”

On the issue of sentence it was argued on appeal by attorneys-at-law Bert Samuels and Matthew Hyatt  that the mandatory minimum sentence legislated was in all the circumstances of the case manifestly excessive and the custodial sentence ought to be reduced.

The court then reduced the sentence by six months for the time spent in pre-sentence custody and ordered that the appellant should serve nine years and six months before he can be eligible for parole.

The suspended sentence for forcible abduction was affirmed this month by the court comprising  Justice McDonald Bishop, Justice Carol Edwards and Justice Marcia Dunbar Green.

The Crown was represented by prosecutors Sophia Rowe and Christina Porter.

-Barbara Gayle

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