The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune News Editor

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

TWO men who left a Freeport man with a fractured eye socket, a brain injury and a hacking wound to his neck should have been prosecuted for attempted murder, the Court of Appeal has said. That charge carries a starting point of 30 to 60 years in prison. Instead, they are serving four.

Zhivargo Ferguson had walked to a shop to buy a soda for his mother. He was hit in the face with a glass bottle and stabbed in the neck as he lay on the ground.

Delivering the court’s reasons in a judgement released yesterday, Court of Appeal President Justice Milton Evans said it was “a matter of grave concern that a violent, near-fatal assault of this magnitude” was tried in Magistrate’s Court as a summary offence, where the maximum sentence is seven years. He said it should have been prosecuted on indictment in the Supreme Court.

Director of Public Prosecutions Cordell Frazier acknowledged before the court that charging the case summarily gave the two men an unwarranted advantage on sentencing.

Ultimately, Justice Evans, Chief Justice Sir Ian Winder and Justice Smith dismissed appeals by Denneyco Rolle and Diallo Remy against their sentences for causing grievous harm.

The attack happened around 2pm on June 14, 2025, near Rachel’s Britannia Mini Mall on Polaris Drive in Caravel Beach. Mr Ferguson and family friend Tyler Knowles were walking through an alleyway after leaving a nearby shop when they met the two men.

According to the evidence accepted at trial, a voice called out a threat to kill one of them. Both men, armed with glass bottles and rocks, then launched an unprovoked attack.

Rolle swung a bottle at Mr Ferguson’s right eye, knocking him unconscious. He then stabbed and hacked at Mr Ferguson’s neck and back while he lay on the ground. Remy chased Mr Knowles and joined the assault.

“I saw blood gushing and Denneyco was jucking him,” Mr Knowles told the magistrate. “Zhivargo was on the floor ball up, while Denneyco was jucking him.”

Mr Ferguson’s injuries also included a cut to the back of his head. He initially lost all sight in his right eye. His vision still fluctuates, and he needs specialist care twice a month.

The court said the neck contains vital arteries and that, but for immediate medical treatment, Mr Ferguson would have bled to death.

Stipendiary and Circuit Magistrate Uel Johnson convicted both men in Freeport on September 22, 2025. He said Mr Ferguson could have lost an eye or bled to death. The magistrate cited their ages in sentencing them to four years each, below the seven-year maximum.

On appeal, the men’s lawyer, Parkco Deal, argued the sentences were excessive. He described the injury as effectively a minor cut to the eyelid, suffered in a spontaneous fight between young men, and called the bottle a “weapon of opportunity”. He asked the court to reduce the sentences to three years.

The judges called the eyelid description “completely unsustainable” when set against the medical evidence. They also rejected the claim that the fight was spontaneous. The court found the men armed themselves in advance and announced their intention to kill before striking the first blow.

Mr Deal had compared the case to that of Dashernique Gibson, who threw acid on a victim during a bar dispute and had her seven-year sentence cut to three on appeal. The court refused the comparison. It said the Crown had conceded the sentence in that case was too harsh because Gibson had a clean record, and that she had apologised.

The judges noted that Rolle had made a full written confession to police and never challenged it. He still made the prosecution prove its case at trial. By fighting the charge against overwhelming evidence, the court said, both men gave up the discount that comes with an early guilty plea.

The men also argued that the magistrate wrongly relied on convictions for fighting recorded against them as juveniles, at ages 15 and 17. The court ruled that the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act expressly allows criminal courts to consider spent convictions, including juvenile ones. It added that a history of fighting is relevant when someone is later convicted of a serious violent offence.

The court also rejected Mr Deal’s argument that deterrence and rehabilitation cannot “sail in the same boat”. It said a four-year term with access to prison programmes served both aims.

On the final ground, the men argued that their trial was unfair because they had no lawyer. Mr Deal had represented them at their arraignment and bail hearing in June 2025, but they represented themselves at trial. The court found that Mr Deal had been retained only for those early hearings and that the men knowingly chose to defend themselves, as the Constitution allows.

The judges said magistrates are not obliged to force legal representation on defendants who choose to proceed without it. Most cases in the Magistrates’ Court involve self-represented defendants.

“To hold otherwise would impose an unmanageable burden on the Magistrates’ Court,” the court said.

The judges found the men suffered no prejudice from being unrepresented, given Rolle’s confession, the eyewitness evidence and the medical evidence. They said any reasonable court would have convicted the men and sentenced them to at least four years.