The Court of Appeal has upheld two arson convictions and a six-and-a-half-year prison sentence for a George Town man who torched a police office and an abandoned car.
Rupert Spence took his case before the appeals court with the hopes of having his convictions overturned on the grounds of contaminated DNA evidence.
However, in a judgment, which was published to the court’s website last week, the appeal judges rejected Spence’s case which they claimed was “wholly without merit”.
Spence was initially convicted in March 2021 on two counts of arson.
Both fires occurred on Walkers Road, one of which caused $158,389 in damages at the RCIPS Professional Standards Unit, Criminal Records Office and the Firearms Licensing Unit at Windjammer Plaza.
According to the judgment, one of the grounds for Spence’s failed appeal argued that by placing two DNA swabs together in the same packaging, the evidence, relied on to convict Spence, had been contaminated.
However, the judges rejected this argument.
“Although there were two swabs placed into one sealed container… there was no question of one swab having contaminated the other. Both swabs were from the same source, namely, the can. That was why they were stored together in the same container,” the judgment stated.
The appeals court judges also raised questions about how the case had managed to secure legal aid and questioned whether the expenditure from the public purse was justified.
Related Videos
