Former Premier McKeeva Bush has been found not guilty on charges of rape and indecent assault in relation to allegations dating back two decades.
It took the jury of four women and three men fewer than two hours to deliver a unanimous verdict Monday after a seven-day trial.
Bush took the stand last week to refute the allegations claiming, “I have never lied to this country.”
After the jurors delivered their verdict, the former speaker of the house stood up and told Justice Roy James that he wished to say something. He made a brief statement indicating he will demand a commission of inquiry into the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions and its connections with the Governor’s Office, the commissioner of police, police officers and some senior civil servants.
Speaking to reporters outside court, a beaming Bush thanked his legal team, his wife and his supporters, some of whom attended court on several days of the trial, before shaking hands with his lawyer Jerome Lynch, KC, and the rest of his legal team.
He told the media he intends to bring a motion to Parliament regarding the commission of inquiry and called for a town hall meeting to be held on Thursday this week, stating, “It’s time for this persecution to stop.”
Earlier this year, a separate case against the West Bay West MP was stopped after a judge ruled there had been an ‘abuse of process’ from the prosecution over disclosure.
The charges in the latest case stem from allegations that Bush raped a woman who drove him home from a celebration at the Sea Inn bar in George Town some time between 1 Jan. 1999 and 31 Dec. 2001.
The woman, who testified on Monday last week, told the court that the assault occurred after she turned the vehicle down a dark road, off West Bay Road, where, she said, he had non-consensual intercourse and oral sex with her on the ground.
Bush, who took the stand on Thursday, emphatically denied the accusations, insisting he’d only met the woman once, when he claims she accosted him on the steps of the then Legislative Assembly, to criticise him for giving residency rights to Jamaicans and Hondurans.
He denied attending a gathering at the Sea Inn Bar at which the woman said she met him and from where she drove him home. She had testified that the gathering had been to celebrate an early milestone in Sir Alden McLaughlin’s political career.
Bush insisted to the jury that he would never had attended such an occasion, that McLaughlin belonged to a rival political party.
Following the verdict Monday, when asked if he intended to stand for election again, Bush, who has been an elected representative for West Bay for 40 years, did not rule it out. He said some family members did not want him to run again, but “others are with me and there’s a tremendous amount of public support”.
“I just have to wait and see,” he added.
He said the trial had had a major effect on him and his family. “I’m not a man to cry easily,” he told reporters, “but I cry for my family, my wife. Fifty years next year we’ll be married, and I’ve had all sorts of things said, that I’ve been accused of.”
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