Jacob Lahai, convicted in 2021 of rape, loses appeal over ‘unsatisfactory’ sentence

A man convicted of rape in 2021, which the judge at the time said was “degrading physical, sexual violence … gratuitous … excessive”, has lost his appeal against his conviction.

A man convicted of rape in 2021, which the judge at the time said was “degrading physical, sexual violence … gratuitous … excessive”, has lost his appeal against his conviction.

Jacob Lahai and his taxi driver friend were convicted in July 2021 of raping a woman at Parramatta Park in the early hours of May 6, 2016.

Lahai was sentenced to nine years imprisonment for his role in the rape, and the counts he was convicted of were declared to be serious violent offences.

Jacob Lahai and a taxi driver raped a woman they picked up outside a Cairns nightclub in 2016. He recently appealed unsuccessfully against his sentence. Picture: Facebook

Lahai appealed his sentence that it was “unsafe and unsatisfactory”, and that the judge in the trial had not communicated DNA findings to the jury – he had failed “to give a significant forensic disadvantage direction” to jurors.

The jury at the time was played a triple-0 call from the victim, in which she said, “I got to lift with a taxi driver and he just pulled up on the side and he’s been raping me”.

She identified the street she was in and that she had been raped by two African men, whom she described as “a fat one and one bony one”.

She gave evidence at the trial that she had gone to a Cairns nightclub on the evening of May 5, 2016 with others, where she drank a dozen vodka cruisers.

They left the nightclub about 3am and her friends got into a taxi, but there was no room for her so she took another.

She gave the driver $20 in cash and her address. She described him as big and fat, with a big round face and bald head, with a silver watch on his left hand and silver chain around his neck.

The other man near the taxi was “a skinny, bony guy”.

They were convicted of raping her over the bonnet of the car, and they dumped her at a telephone box at Martyn Street, Parramatta Park afterwards.

Lahai appealed against the sentence on the grounds it was manifestly excessive because of the imposition of the serious violent offence declaration.

The judge at the time found that “the offending against her was degrading physical, sexual violence. It was gratuitous. It was excessive, in my view, albeit without a weapon. But you both were a formidable force against her.”

Lahai’s DNA was excluded as a contributor to DNA found on the woman’s clothing.

His lawyer had argued at trial that he was at a significant forensic disadvantage because of a delay of three years after the rape and when police first spoke to him, because his clothes could not – three years later – be forensically examined.

The judge was not satisfied that was the case, and if there were some disadvantage it was not significant.

The appeal judges did not find the overall sentence of nine years’ imprisonment with a serious violent offence declaration “unreasonable or plainly unjust” for the offences in all the circumstances.

They dismissed his appeal, and refused his application for leave to appeal against his sentence.

Originally published as Jacob Lahai, convicted in 2021 of rape, loses appeal over ‘unsatisfactory’ sentence