GEORGETOWN, Guyana (CMC) – The Court of Appeal in Guyana has dismissed an appeal by a man who was given a 28-year jail term for raping a five-year-old child twice in 2013.

Colvin Norton had been sentenced to imprisonment in 2018, after the jury found him guilty of raping the child between August 1 and August 6, 2013, in the county of Demerara.

The court had heard that Norton is known to the victim and was a frequent visitor at their home. Norton, on August 1, 2013, raped the child while she was left alone with him. The child was afraid and did not tell her parents.

However, on August 6, 2013, the victim’s mother caught Norton red-handed while in the act with her daughter. He was later arrested.

He was sentenced by Justice Jo-Ann Barlow at the Georgetown High Court for two counts of rape with the judge imposing a 24-year jail term for the first count and 28 years for the second count. The sentences were to run concurrently.

Norton had filed an appeal challenging the conviction and severity of his sentence and his attorneys, Dexter Todd and Dexter Smartt had also challenged the adequacy of the victim’s medical examination.

The three-member Appeal Court, headed by acting Chancellor of the Judiciary, Justice Yonette Cummings-Edwards, and including Justices of Appeal Dawn Gregory and Rishi Persaud, heard the appeal by Zoom and later ruled that the Court did not find that the trial judge erred in law in her sentencing.

The Appeal Court also said that the sentence imposed by the trial judge was appropriate taking into consideration the mitigating and aggravating factors of the case.