A man serving jail time for raping a teenager was cleared on Thursday of a charge of burglary in a separate case.

Tewolde Selassie, 29, was accused in the latest charge of breaking in through the window of a 59-year-old woman's ground floor apartment overnight on April 29, 2005 and stealing her handbag.

The complainant told the jury she woke around 5.30 a.m. to see a man's leg disappearing through the window of a room where she was asleep along with her daughter, and realised her handbag was missing.

Selassie denied the offence, claiming a fingerprint of his found on the woman's window had been left a week earlier when he visited the house trying to find handyman work.

The jury took just over an hour on Thursday morning to unanimously acquit him of the burglary charge. They had heard him admit during the case to being a convicted burglar. However, what they were not told was that Selassie had been found guilty by a separate jury in May this year of raping a teenager after breaking into her bedroom.

That trial heard the 15-year-old victim was a virgin when she was attacked by Selassie in the middle of the night in January 2005 after he broke in through her window. After the jury delivered a guilty verdict in that case, he was jailed for 25 years by Puisne Judge Carlisle Greaves. He is in the process of appealing against both that conviction and sentence.

The burglary case was heard by Puisne Judge Charles-Etta Simmons after Selassie vehemently objected to it being heard by Mr. Justice Greaves. At the start of the trial on Monday — while the jury was absent from the courtroom — he accused Mr. Justice Greaves of being "a disgrace to the bench" and of being "manipulative" during his trial for rape. He branded that trial as "biased from the beginning."

Mr. Justice Greaves adjourned the case briefly to consider the matter before telling him: "I have given consideration to your submission, that you do not wish this judge to conduct the trial, you would like another judge. But you do not have your right in law to choose which judge to try you. If it was such, that persons could choose their own judge, we would have a very difficult system indeed. So you can't choose your own judge.

"However, there are several judges in this jurisdiction and I think in all the circumstances I feel no reason why you can't be tried by another judge. I have no personal interest in the matter."

Mr. Justice Greaves added that he did not want anyone to think his decision was setting a precedent.