The Tribune

By FARRAH JOHNSON

Tribune Staff Reporter

fjohnson@tribunemedia.net

THE Court of Appeal yesterday reduced the sentence of a man who was convicted of stealing an assortment of items from a woman almost two years ago.

In 2019, Andie Taylor and his co-accused, Eltraneko Green, admitted stealing $1,000 cash, along with a cell phone and shoes from a woman. The men were also found guilty of hurting the victim after they each pleaded guilty to one count of causing harm during their arraignment.

At the time, the presiding magistrate accepted both men’s guilty pleas and sentenced them to four years for stealing and one year for causing harm. Both sentences were ordered to run concurrently.

Nonetheless, Green, who had appealed his sentence at a previous hearing, had his four-year sentence reduced to two years and six months.

Taylor recently sought to appeal his sentence relative to the stealing charge, on the grounds that the punishment handed down to him was “unduly harsh and severe” given the circumstances of the case.

After reserving their decision in July, Sir Michael Barnett, Milton Evans and Carolita Bethell yesterday quashed Taylor’s four-year sentence and substituted it with a sentence of three years’ imprisonment. .

In their judgement, delivered by Justice Evans, the panel ruled the magistrate should have considered the fact that Taylor’s previous conviction of a similar nature that the magistrate considered when sentencing the applicant happened over a decade ago.

“There was no dispute as to the fact that the applicant had previous convictions,” Justice Evans said.

“A court is entitled to take into consideration the fact that a convict has previous convictions. This fact would necessarily become more serious if the offences were similar in nature to that for which he is about to be sentenced, but where the previous offences are not of a similar nature they would not be as aggravating.

“The learned magistrate ought to have taken into consideration that the applicant had only one offence of a similar nature and that the offence had occurred some ten years ago when he was still a teenager. Had the learned magistrate given due consideration to the true import of the applicant’s antecedents, she would have exercised her discretion differently. The appropriate sentence for the applicant should have been three years”.