The Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) today denied the appeal of three former members of the Guyana Coast Guard who were convicted of murder, and are currently serving life sentences.
The three soldiers, Sherwain Hart, Devon Gordon and Deon Greenidge, were convicted in 2013 and sentenced to death over the robbery and murder of goldminer, Dwieve Kant Ramdass.
The man was killed in August 2009 and his body dumped overboard.
The soldiers had initially appealed their conviction and death sentence in the Guyana Court of Appeal. The local Court upheld the conviction, but reduced the sentence to life in prison, with the possibility of parole after 18 years.
Not satisfied with that decision, the three convicts took their case to the Caribbean Court of Justice.
The CCJ today refused special leave to appeal the case, thereby denying the appeal completely and affirming the life sentence handed down by the Court of Appeal in Guyana.
The CCJ, bearing in mind that the offenders were members of the Defence Force who robbed and murdered an innocent citizen, found that there was no ground for regarding the sentence imposed as excessive or so manifestly outside the mainstream of sentences as would merit granting leave to appeal it.
Furthermore, CCJ said the Court of Appeal had imposed the minimum sentence that it was mandated to do and therefore the applicants had no basis for complaint.
The Court also dismissed a request by one of the convicts, Deon Greenidge for his conviction to overturned completely, and the Court also refuse to hear the men’s case about the constitutionality of the death sentence, pointing out that their sentencing had already been reduced to a life in prison sentence.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login