The Court of Appeal has rejected a bail application for 50-year-old policeman Leslie Walker. He was convicted of rape involving a minor.
Walker was sentenced in July last year to 15 years in prison. And Walker was ordered to serve 10 years before he could be eligible for parole.
Walker joined the police force in 1997. He had made the bail application because the judge’s verdict was unreasonable regarding all the evidence.
He contends that his appeal has a real prospect of success.
Attorneys-at-law for Walker, King’s Counsel Peter Champagnie, and attorney-at-law Jacqueline Cummings argued that there were exceptional circumstances in Walker’s case. Therefore, the court should grant him bail pending his appeal hearing.
The attorneys argued that there was no evidence that another person may have fathered the complainant’s child. And the prosecution has not established whether the complainant was intimate with anybody else.
They also submitted that Walker was of good character and likely to serve the more significant portion of his sentence before the appeal was heard.
At the trial, the complainant had testified that at the time of the incident in February 2016, she was a nine-grade student at a high school.
She was clad in her school uniform and awaiting transportation to school when Walker, pulled up in a car and offered her a ride.
But, instead he drove to his house, invited her inside, and raped her.
But the matter was never reported to the police until June 2016. A medical examination was conducted and it was confirmed that the child was four months pregnant.
By agreement, DNA results excluding Walker as the putative father of the child, were tendered into evidence.
Walker, the father of four children, two of which are underage, had categorically denied the allegations. And stated that he never interacted with the complainant on the day of the incident.
According to the accused, on the particular day and time of the alleged sexual assault, he was at home getting ready to attend a firearm training course at the Jamaica Police Academy.
A police officer who testified for the defense stated that Walker was at the training course.
Counsel for the Crown, Renelle Morgan, opposed the bail application and argued that the defense failed to advance any convincing exceptional circumstances for bail to be granted.
Acting Court of Appeal Judge Evan Brown denied bail. He contended that: “while there have been inordinate delays between conviction and the hearing of an appeal in the past, there is no reason to think such a delay will bedevil this appeal.”