Eleven murder convicts who had been condemned to death have been freed as a consequence of the Privy Council's landmark decision in 2006 that declared the mandatory death penalty unconstitutional, The Nassau Guardian can reveal.  Before the decision, murder convicts were automatically condemned to death regardless if there were any extenuating circumstances in the crime.

The killers, whose convictions were upheld on appeal, had to be re-sentenced after the Privy Council ruling invalidated their death sentences.  In the absence of any statutory guidelines, sentencing judges considered the circumstances of the offense and the progress the offender had made while in custody in determining an appropriate sentence.

Last month, the Court of Appeal upheld the release of Quincy Todd, who was on January 22, 1996 convicted of the murder of Venette Bellizaire.  Senior Justice Jon Isaacs ordered Todd released during a resentencing hearing on April 2010.  The Attorney General's Office had appealed the judge's decision because they thought it was too light.

Also released on resentencing were contract killer Larry Raymond Jones, Patrick Jervis, Arnold Heastie, Garnet Jones, Barry Roberts, Jeronimo Bowleg, Clive Schroeter, Nekita Hamilton, James Dean, and Michelle Woodside.  The Court of Appeal increased the 20-year sentence of Chad Goodman, who was convicted in 1996 of the murder of David Fletcher, to 50 years.

Garnet Jones and two other men raped and killed a 19-year-old girl near the Sea Breeze Canal.  The rapists shot the young woman nine times after the forced sex act.  Bowleg was given an additional 10 years on resentencing for the murder of Dieuseul Almanor.  However, the Court of Appeal ordered his release in 2009 because the same judge allowed his codefendant Schroeter back into society.

The court said at the time, "In the interest of justice, we find ourselves constrained to reduce the sentence of 10 years passed on the appellant so as to avoid any appearance of unfairness between people involved in the same offense.  We wish to state, of course, in this matter that our decision is not to be understood as an approval of the sentence of the Supreme Court passed on Schroeter in this matter.  It is just trying to correct the scales of justice."

The Attorney General's Office also challenged the sentences given to Hamilton, Dean and Woodside in 2007; however, the Court of Appeal dismissed their applications because the prosecutor's office botched the appeal procedure.  Hamilton was convicted on April 25, 1989 of the premeditated murder of 75-year-old David Cleare.  In 2007, a judge sentenced him to an additional five years in prison in addition to three years' probation on his release.

Dean was convicted on August 19, 1988 of the offense of murder committed in the course of armed robbery.  He was ordered to serve an additional three years in addition to three years' probation.  Woodside was convicted in 1991 of the murder of Sister Clare Haas, with whom she worked as a secretary at Our Lady's Catholic Church.  Woodside smashed in the nun's head with a cement block and slashed her throat with a knife to conceal the theft of $6000.

Woodside was sentenced to five years imprisonment and placed on three years' probation.
In its decision to refuse permission to appeal those sentences, the court said, "We have reached this conclusion with regret since in our view there were issues raised on the record which could have resulted in an arguable appeal on the validity of the sentences passed."

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