Former school football coach freed of sex assault convictions
Published:Monday | November 17, 2025 | 12:52 AM
The Court of Appeal has quashed the sex-assault convictions of former high school football coach Kevin Williams, ruling that the trial judge caused a “miscarriage of justice” by refusing to postpone the case when Williams’ chosen lawyer was unavailable.
The unanimous 45-page judgment, handed down on Friday, sharply criticised the decision of Justice Vinette Graham-Allen, finding that her refusal to grant a short adjournment deprived Williams of a fair trial.
“The learned trial judge’s decision to refuse the adjournment deprived Williams of a fair trial, thereby rendering the verdict against him unsafe. The miscarriage of justice occasioned by that decision is a sufficient basis on which to allow the appeal and quash the convictions,” wrote Justice Vivene Harris. “It seems improbable that a short adjournment ... could not have been accommodated.”
The court further held that ordering a retrial would not serve the interests of justice, citing the significant passage of time, doubts about witness availability, and the fact that Williams has already served nearly six years in custody.
Williams was accused of indecent assault and having sexual intercourse with a person under 16, said to have occurred on October 12, 2017 at Mona High School in St Andrew, where he was a coach. The complainant was a 15-year-old grade-11 student. In March 2019, he was convicted and later sentenced to just under 12 years in prison, with parole eligibility after 10.
Williams had denied the allegations.
The appeal, heard in May and June 2024, focused on whether Justice Graham-Allen erred in refusing an adjournment after Williams’ attorney, Patrick Peterkin, could not attend due to commitments in a Turks and Caicos Islands case. Another lawyer from Peterkin’s chambers appeared on the March 11, 2019 trial date to request the delay.
Justice Graham-Allen rejected the request immediately, directing the stand-in lawyer to take instructions from Williams, who was in the dock.
“I am not putting it off … witnesses are here … we are going to start the case,” she said.
In her affidavit, the trial judge asserted that Peterkin had known of his conflicting engagement at least a week before and therefore had enough time to seek an adjournment. She also pointed to court rules discouraging adjournment applications made on the day of trial.
But attorney Sanjay Smith, who argued the appeal, said Williams’ right to counsel of choice and adequate time to prepare had been violated. The denial of an adjournment, he argued, resulted in Williams being “tried without his attorney of choice and denied his right to adequate time and facilities to properly instruct defence counsel and adequately prepare for his trial”.
Smith maintained that Peterkin’s absence was not caused by any fault of Williams’, and that a short delay would not have inconvenienced the court or prejudiced the complainant. He stressed that the charges carried severe, life-altering consequences – imprisonment, loss of income and a criminal record – while the stand-in counsel was wholly unfamiliar with the case and had never before appeared on it.
The prosecution, led by Kristen Anderson Palarche, countered that adjournments are discretionary and that the judge was entitled to prevent unnecessary delay. Anderson Palarche argued that because the stand-in lawyer came from the same chambers as Peterkin and appeared on the trial date, she was capable of representing Williams. A defendant’s preference for counsel, the prosecution maintained, is “subservient to the overarching goal of achieving a fair trial”.
The Court of Appeal disagreed, finding that the trial judge failed to properly consider the risk her decision posed to Williams’ defence. The replacement attorney, who had about four years’ experience at the time, had no prior involvement in the matter and received the case file only on the morning of the trial, after the judge insisted that she conduct the defence.
Preparation time
The judges rejected the prosecution’s claim that she had sufficient preparation time. They noted that she was afforded just two hours and 25 minutes, in stark contrast to Peterkin, a lawyer of roughly 12 years’ experience, who had been preparing the case for months, as had the prosecution.
“Defence counsel, being junior at the Bar, unfamiliar with the matter and further deprived of an opportunity to adequately prepare, would have been adversely affected in her approach to the cross-examination of the complainant (as well as the other prosecution witnesses),” the court said.
The court emphasised that inadequate preparation time was evident in the attorney’s failure to suggest to the complainant that she fabricated her account for financial gain – a central component of Williams’ defence. That omission, the court said, likely stemmed from the lack of time, compounded by the trial judge’s frequent interventions, scrutiny of the lawyer’s approach, and even stepping in to frame questions herself.
“A short adjournment would not have put the trial in peril, but the risk of injustice to Williams was palpable. … We find that the learned trial judge erred in refusing to grant the adjournment, which resulted in an unfair trial,” the appeal judges concluded.
The court dismissed two other grounds of appeal. It found no proof that non-disclosure of the complainant’s cell phone would have affected the verdict, and rejected claims that Justice Graham-Allen’s interventions amounted to bias. While her comments were “openly critical” of the stand-in attorney’s performance and had some potential to influence the jury, the judges found that most were made outside the jury’s hearing and did not render the verdict unsafe.
Justices Jennifer Straw and Nicole Foster-Pusey agreed with the judgment. Acting Supreme Court judge Andrea Martin-Swaby also appeared for the prosecution on appeal.