On retrial for brutal rape, man gets life imprisonment without parole

Having lost a retrial, Julius Brunker, initially sentenced to 40 years for the brutal rape of a woman in 2014, has now been sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

The sentence was handed down on Monday by Justice Navindra Singh at the Sexual Offences Court in the Georgetown High Court.

Last month, in the retrial for a 2014 rape case, Brunker was once again found guilty by a 12-member jury for the crime.

The offence occurred on February 15, 2014, when Brunker unlawfully entered the young woman’s home and raped her while she was asleep in her bed with her 18-month-old baby.

Brunker reportedly held the woman at knife-point while he raped her.

He was represented by attorney-at-law Adrian Thompson, while the State was represented by Marisa Edwards.

In 2018, Justice Simone Morris-Ramlall sentenced Brunker to serve 40 years, after a 12-member jury found him guilty of the crime.

Dissatisfied with the ruling of the High Court, Brunker mounted an appeal against the conviction and sentence, claiming several errors in law were made by the trial judge.

Thompson had contended that the trial judge did not properly put the defence’s case to the jury, in accordance with the law.

In delivering the Court of Appeal’s ruling last year, Chancellor (ag), Yonette Cummings-Edwards, noted that the defence’s case should have been properly put to the jury.

She added that the jury should have been directed accordingly, taking into consideration the evidence that was provided to the High Court during his first trial.

As such a retrial was ordered.