The Tribune

By PAVEL BAILEY

Tribune Staff Reporter

pbailey@tribunemedia.net

CONVICTED child killer Roger Watson has been ordered to be resentenced after a successful appeal before the Privy Council.

Watson was formerly on death row after he was convicted in 2006 of the January 2003 murder of 12-year-old Eddison Curtis-Johnson.

During his trial, it was revealed that Watson had a feud with the victim’s stepfather.

 On the night of the boy’s death, Watson reportedly fired an assault rifle into the victim’s wooden house, resulting in Eddison being shot in his head as he watched TV in the living room.

 Watson was sentenced to death in 2007. He then went before the Court of Appeal in 2009 and had his murder conviction reduced to manslaughter after it was determined that he had no intention of killing the child. His lawyers argued that Watson didn’t know anyone was at home at the time as the lights were off. Watson was instead ordered to serve a 50-year prison term.

 Lords David Lloyd-Jones, Michael Briggs and Ben Stephens of the Privy Council found that the Court of Appeal failed to hear sentencing submissions from Watson’s attorneys prior to his prison term being issued. Lord Lloyd-Jones found that such a move was a serious breach in procedural fairness.

 “In the present case, it was a basic requirement of procedural fairness that, following his successful appeal against conviction for murder, the appellant should have been given the opportunity to address the Court of Appeal as to the correct factual basis on which he should be sentenced for the offence of manslaughter, as to the range of sentences imposed by the courts for manslaughter and as to where his offence stood within that range,” Lord Lloyd-Jones said.

 It was also found that the Court of Appeal failed to take into consideration the three years Watson spent on remand in their sentencing.

“Section 186(2) of The Bahamas Criminal Procedure Code states that a sentence of the court takes effect from the day on which it was imposed unless the court directs otherwise. In passing sentence in the present case the Court of Appeal ordered that the sentence of 50 years’ imprisonment was to run from the date of conviction. As a result, the sentence fails to take account of the period of some three years which the appellant spent in custody on remand pending trial,” Lord Lloyd-Jones said.

 The Privy Council directed the Court of Appeal to take these factors into consideration in its resentencing.