The Tribune

By FARRAH JOHNSON

Tribune Staff Reporter

fjohnson@tribunemedia.net

A MAN who was convicted of killing another man in 1998 had the appeal against his life sentence granted and the matter was sent to the Supreme Court for resentencing.

In 1998, the appellant Ervin Brown was convicted of the murder of Adras Moltimer and sentenced to the then mandatory death penalty. His appeal against conviction and sentence was affirmed a year later and he was subsequently remanded to death row.

Still, after the Privy Council’s decision in Bowe & Davis v Regina, the mandatory death sentence was quashed and the appellant was brought before the Supreme Court in 2012 to be re-sentenced. This time, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

The convict appealed his sentence after arguing the sentence was unduly severe and harsh.

Earlier this week, Justices Maureen Crane-Scott, Milton Evans and Roy Jones granted his appeal after ruling the imposition of the life sentence was wrong in principle.

According to a judgment posted on the Crown’s website, when the appellant was brought before the Supreme Court in 2012 to be resentenced, a probation report was ordered.

“The report indicated that the appellant had, since his admission to prison, been tentatively diagnosed with a mental condition and that he was being housed on a block reserved for prisoners who were mentally ill,” according to the judgment.

“Instead of adjourning the hearing and ordering the preparation of a psychiatric report to ascertain the precise nature and extent of Brown’s condition and more importantly, whether that condition put him at risk of re-offending and made him a danger to the public, the learned judge proceeded to hear legal arguments in relation to sentence.”

After revising the submissions, the judge re-sentenced the convict to life imprisonment and gave instructions for him to receive the appropriate treatment for his mental disability.

In his appeal, the appellant’s counsel, Roberto Reckley, argued that the sentence handed down to his client was severe because there was nothing which suggested the appellant was “incapable of reform or rehabilitation”.

In their judgment, the panel said the fact that an accused might be suffering from a mental condition does not mean that the accused is likely to reoffend.

“The exercise of the discretion to impose a sentence of imprisonment for life may be justified in circumstances where the offence for which the defendant is to be sentenced is particularly grave and the evidence before the sentencing judge is such that it provides good grounds for believing that the offender’s likelihood of further offending is so great that he may remain a serious danger to the public for a period which cannot reliably be estimated at the time of sentence,” they noted.

“The mere fact that a defendant may be suffering from a mental condition, does not lead inexorably to the conclusion that the defendant is likely to reoffend or that he poses a danger to the public in the future so as to justify the imposition of the maximum sentence of imprisonment for life.”

Justice Crane-Scott insisted the evidence before the judge must be able to support a conclusion that the accused is very likely to offend again in order to justify the imposition of a life sentence.

“Having failed to obtain—as he should have—the necessary expert evidence both as to the nature and extent of the appellant’s tentative psychiatric diagnosis and of his likelihood of further serious offending in the future, there was no reasonable basis for the learned judge’s conclusion that the appellant may remain a serious danger to the public for a period which could not reliably be estimated,” she stated.

“The exercise of the judge’s discretion in imposing the indeterminate sentence of imprisonment for life in this case was accordingly wrong in principle, patently erroneous and could not stand.”