The Tribune

By FARRAH JOHNSON

Tribune Staff Reporter

fjohnson@tribunemedia.net

A MAN who was convicted of killing another man when he was a teenager has had his life sentence quashed and the matter sent back to the Supreme Court for resentencing.

The convict was accused of killing Manes Saint- Ilien, also known as John Saint Ilien, in Eight Mile Rock, Grand Bahama in 2006. At the time, the convict was only 15 years old.

In 2010, the appellant pled guilty to manslaughter by reason of provocation and was subsequently sentenced to life in prison.

He appealed his sentence after arguing the conviction handed down to him was based on the wrong principle of law.

Yesterday, Justices Maureen Crane-Scott, Roy Jones and Milton Evans quashed the appellant’s sentence and remitted the case to the Supreme Court for resentencing, after ruling that a life sentence is “inappropriate where the index offence is not grave enough to require a very long sentence”.

According to a judgement posted on the Court of Appeal’s website, after the appellant pleaded guilty to manslaughter, the trial judge ordered a social inquiry report to be conducted.

The document revealed the appellant had “longstanding mental issues” and had since been diagnosed with schizophrenia after his arrest and remand.

“The learned judge imposed a life sentence without obtaining medical evidence from the psychiatrist as to the appellant’s likelihood of further offending,” the court documents read.

“(This) would have provided him with a basis for determining whether there were good grounds for believing that the appellant was or would remain a serious danger to the public for a period which cannot be reliably estimated at the date of sentence.”

In his appeal, the convict’s counsel, Glendon Rolle, argued that the life imprisonment sentence imposed on his client was wrong in principle, because the learned judge failed to thoroughly inform himself about the “nature and extent” of his psychiatric condition and his “risk of future (danger) to the public”.

In their judgement, the panel agreed with this argument after concluding that the judge was wrong to impose the life sentence “in the absence of evidence as to the appellant’s likelihood of further offending”.

“The authorities clearly establish that a life sentence is inappropriate where the index offence is not grave enough to require a very long sentence,” they noted.

“However, where a judge is satisfied that the offence is so grave that a very long sentence is warranted, the judge must then proceed to consider any evidence of the appellant’s likelihood of further offending and the gravity of such further offending in order to discover whether there are good grounds for believing that the defendant may remain a serious danger to the public for a period which cannot be reliably estimated at the date of sentence.”

The panel further asserted the fact that both sides agreed that a life sentence could be considered “merciful” to the appellant since it would ensure he would receive treatment, and did not make his sentence “any less erroneous”.

“Such a goal could equally have been achieved by the imposition of a custodial sentence of a definite term of years during which the appellant could have been ordered to receive the necessary treatment,” Justice Crane-Scott stated.

“For all the foregoing reasons, we allowed the appeal against sentence on ground one, quashed the appellant’s life sentence and remitted the matter to the Supreme Court for resentencing. The appellant was duly remanded into custody pending his re-sentencing before the Supreme Court as a matter of urgency.”