By FARRAH JOHNSON
Tribune Staff Reporter
fjohnson@tribunemedia.net
A MAN seeking to challenge the sentence he received for strangling his 49-year-old godmother and leaving her dead in a bathtub will receive a court-appointed lawyer for his appeal application.
Appellate Justices Sir Michael Barnett, Jon Isaacs and Maureen Crane-Scott yesterday granted Dwayne Belizaire’s request to be appointed an attorney at the public’s expense to aid him in contesting his sentence for murdering Margaret Smith.
The mother-of-three was killed on Valentine’s Day four years ago.
On February 5, 2020, a Supreme Court jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict for Belizaire. He was sentenced to 40 years imprisonment a few months later.
Smith was found dead at her home in Seagrape, Eight Mile Rock, on February 14, 2017. The prosecution believed she might have been killed between 10am and shortly after noon.
According to an autopsy, she was strangled and immersed in water. The deceased also had injuries on her back from a knife and a bite mark on her arm.
During the trial, the prosecution produced DNA evidence linking Belizaire to Smith’s murder. According to the evidence, the accused’s DNA was found under fingernail clippings of the deceased and also inside a condom that was found by police in bushes behind the dead woman’s home along with her clothing and a set of keys to her house.
Yesterday, Crown attorney Zoë Bowleg did not object to Belizaire’s request for a public defender.
As a result, Sir Michael said he would be appointed defence counsel on July 26.
He also said the panel would set a date for Belizaire’s substantive appeal on that day.
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