Unanimous verdict frees accused of carnal knowledge indictment
BALRAM Pitam called Netash was freed of a carnal knowledge indictment after a mixed Berbice Assizes jury unanimously found him not guilty of the sexual offence last Thursday. Discharging him, Justice Roxanne George, who had delivered a two-hour summation, said: “I think the case for the prosecution fell down a bit. Because of the sensitivity, I cannot divulge more.”
Pitam calmly walked to the back of the courtroom to join his waiting relatives who embraced him.
Earlier, defence counsel, Joel Edmond Persid, in his address, reminded the jurors of the evidence given by the virtual complainant, whose statement, he claimed, was riddled with inconsistencies.
The lawyer referred to instances where the complainant said she had texted ‘Merry Christmas’ to the accused brother’s phone and she could not recall whether she told the police that her father had forced the accused to stop the bus.
In addition, Persid pointed out to the jury the complainant’s evidence of the accused pulling down her underwear when she had previously stated that she had not worn any underwear at the time of the incident.
Counsel made mention of the complainant referring to the accused as “an over the fence friend” when there were no fence dividing their respective homes. 
Persid said the evidence of Dr. Sinclair revealed that there were one to three days old abrasions and tears on the hymen, when the complainant said the act was committed within a nine-hour period.
The lawyer questioned why should the accused take the complainant into a lighted yard, knowing that her father, a minibus driver, could have returned home at anytime, instead of driving into a secluded area to have sex.
“Her story is highly unbelievable. She never made an alarm. She said she was closer to the accused brother than him. The complainant is not creditable. She gave different versions of the story,” counsel maintained.
The accused, in an unsworn statement from the dock, said he received a telephone call at 00:15hrs on December 25, 2008, from his younger brother, requesting that he drop the virtual complainant home.

RELATIONSHIP
“My brother and the virtual complainant had a relationship. She was present at our home, as we had a family get together. He asked me to drop her off as he did not have a driver’s licence. As I was driving along the road, I was forced to stop the minibus, as the virtual complainant’s father approached me armed with a piece of wood. I then ran away. I never had sex with the complainant,” the accused stated.
In her opening address, State Prosecutor Rhondel Weaver had alleged that Netash had carnal knowledge of the 14-year-old during the wee hours of Christmas Day 2008.
The prosecutor said, on the Christmas Eve, having retired to bed at midnight, the teenager took her brother’s cellular phone and texted “Merry Christmas”. A subsequent telephone call was received and, on answering it, she was told that it was the accused, who requested to meet her outside her parents’ home.
The prosecutor said the virtual complainant complied and saw the accused seated on the driver’s seat of a minibus and following a conversation, he exited the vehicle, took her into her parents’ yard, where he braced her next to an old car and had sex.
Weaver said the prosecution will relieve itself of its burden by proving that it was the accused who had carnal knowledge of the victim, who was under the age of 15 years and incapable of giving consent.
She told the jurors that the slightest penetration of the vagina, even without the emission of semen, is sufficient for commission of the offence.