PASTOR JIPPY DOYLE, still proclaiming he was innocent, walked to freedom yesterday after spending less than three years in prison.
“I’ve maintained my innocence from the beginning, and I continue to press that one day my name will be cleared,” Doyle told the DAILY NATION as he exited the gates of Dodds Prisons.
In an unprecedented move and a breakaway from prison tradition, the tele-evangelist was released yesterday shortly after midday.
Looking dazed and emotionally touched, the once popular pastor looked back at the prison gates and said: “It was very rough. Prison is no easy place . . . . Don’t let anybody make you believe that prison is easy.
“A lot of men go through a lot of difficult times,” he added.
Doyle, who thanked his attorneys, led bySir Richard Cheltenham, and his family for supporting him throughout his ordeal, said he would be returning to the pulpit immediately.
“I was in prison preaching every single day, and I will continue to do the work of God. That’s the purpose of my life,” he said.
Doyle said the last three days had been extremely difficult for him, since he was looking forward to being freed no later than Saturday.
“On Friday, I was preparing for release on Saturday. I was prepped and got everything ready. Then, at the last minute the assistant superintendent came and told me that I would not be released because of some papers from the DPP [Director of Public Prosecutions].
“It was depressing,” he said.
Fate however swung in Doyle’s favour yesterday when, according to him, a prison officer came to his cell and said:
“Doyle get ready; you’re going home today.” Doyle had some advice for young people on his departure from Dodds.
“Stay out of trouble,” he said.
Yesterday’s unexpected release of Doyle followed a legal technicality that prompted his lawyers to prepare to file a writ of habeas corpus today against the prison superintendent.
Sir Richard, who along with attorney Shelly-Ann Seecharan welcomed Doyle back to freedom outside the St Philip jail, said he had sent a letter to prison boss John Nurse about the circumstances surrounding his client.
“I made it clear to him that if Jippy was not freed by midnight tonight [Sunday] at the latest, by tomorrow [today] he would have to show cause to the judge why [Doyle] is being held.
“I got word from the prison after midday that Jippy would be freed,” Sir Richard said.
The new development followed a telephone call to Doyle’s lawyers Friday, indicating that the convicted pastor was being treated as a prisoner on remand and there was no date set for his release.
The instructions, according to the unnamed senior prison official reportedly came from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Doyle had his sentence reduced by the Court of Appeal last December to three years on a lesser count of indecently assaulting a 13-year-old female member of his Dominion Life congregation at Haggatt Hall, St Michael, ten years ago.
The Appeal Court had thrown out a ten-year conviction of raping the girl, imposed by a high court judge on October 2008.
Doyle has since appealed his latest conviction to the Caribbean Court of Appeal.