Ex-security guard’s moving pleas fail to cut jail time
Kenroy Rowe
(CNS): A Jamaican man who is serving six years in jail for wounding with intent earlier this year, after he stabbed a customer with a flick knife while working at a George Town bar, has failed in his bid to cut his jail term. In an emotional plea to the appeal court panel, in which Kenroy Leonard Rowe was unrepresented, the former security guard nervously stuttered through his entreaty to the court that he was filled with remorse, had learned his lesson and had now no way to provide for his child, to whom he said he had been “both a father and a mother”.
As he appealed to the panel to reduce his sentence, Rowe said that his son was not able to go to school and life was very difficult for the child.
Justice Sir Richard Field, who spoke for the panel, said they had noted how sorry Rowe was in his moving address to the court and the difficulties he now faced but there was no basis on which to reduce the sentence. He said the sentence was not wrong or manifestly excessive, given the seriousness of the offence. In light of the severity of the wound inflicted on his victim, Justice Field said, Rowe was lucky not to be serving a far longer term because he could have been convicted of attempted murder, or even murder if the man had not survived the chest wound, which had caused his lung to collapse.
Rowe stabbed the man during an altercation outside the Energy Bar on Shedden Road with a knife he had confiscated from another customer. At trial Rowe had claimed self-defence but witnesses and CCTV footage cast considerable doubt on the claim.
Guys like him needs to stay locked up. Jamaican men think they rule the world. He should have done life in prison. Wrong is wrong
Deportation order?
Everyday racism?
In the UK almost all prisoners only serve two thirds of their sentence, is that the case here?
CNS Note: Its less. At present it is 5/9s (55.5%) but once the conditional release law is commenced and this is said to be imminent it will switch to 60% a marginal percentage increase.
Wrong..you have to serve one third before you are eligible for parole. Foreigners have to seve five ninths of their sentence before considered for parole after which they are deported.
Actually, following the assault on the AGs home, a Parole Law was passed which lists a large number of offences which are subject to the 5/9ths rule, while any non-proscribed offences (such as death by dangerous driving) are still on the old 1/3rd rule. Expats who are sentenced to 1 year or more are subject to deportation.