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Feb 02, 2021 News
Kaieteur News – Murder convict, Jermaine Maynard, has asked the Appeal Court to reduce the 88-year jail sentence, which was imposed on him by Justice Navindra Singh, for the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Carlissa Matthews.
The matter commenced before the Appeal Court in Kingston yesterday, with Chancellor of the Judiciary, Justice Yonette Cummings-Edwards, Justices of Appeal, Dawn Gregory and Rishi Persaud, presiding over the hearing.
Attorney-at-law Nigel Hughes, presented submissions against the 88-year sentence his client is serving.
In 2016, Justice Singh had imposed the 88-year sentence with a base of 60 years on Maynard, he added 10 years for premeditation, six years for domestic violence, six years for a previous similar conviction, three years for the use of a fire arm and three years for public endangerment.
In his written submissions, Hughes has asked the Appeal Court to consider that trial Judge was without jurisdiction to impose a sentence of six years for a previous conviction, which was not the subject of the trial before him.
He has asked the Court to consider among other things that the Judge fell into error when he purported to impose a sentence of six years for domestic violence, when there was no evidence before him on this subject, but the mere opinion of the mother of the deceased who characterized the relationship as abusive.
Additionally, the attorney contends that the trial Judge fell into error when he imposed a sentence of three years for public endangerment, when there was no evidence that any member of the public, other than the deceased, was endangered.
Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Dionne McCammon, was given until February 5, 2021 to respond, and the Court will entertain arguments in this case on February 16, 2021.
In the meantime, Maynard who maintained his innocence throughout his trial in the High Court remains in prison. He had told the Court that he is not the person who killed Mathews on December 31, 2013, at Stabroek, Georgetown.
However, the victim’s mother, Carol Kennedy, recalled that Maynard pulled out a gun from his side and shot her daughter outside KFC.
The woman had informed the High Court of the abusive relationship, which her daughter shared with Maynard. At one point of her testimony, Kennedy recalled the shooter standing over her daughter even after she was injured, and pressed on the trigger of the silver pistol; the gun clicked three times.
She remembered that at that stage she started to advance toward the shooter, but her fiancé, Collis Bruce, who was also standing outside the KFC outlet on Water and Croal Streets, Georgetown, kept her back telling her that Maynard was still armed and could shoot her as well.
Additionally, reports had indicated that minutes before the shooting, Maynard approached his 20-year-old ex-lover, and was seen briefly talking to her.
He had requested a private audience with Matthews but she refused. Moments later Maynard pulled out a gun and shot her to the head.
Matthews was rushed to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC), where she succumbed early New Year’s Day 2014. Maynard fled the scene after the shooting but was nabbed at the ‘back track’ crossing at Springlands, Corentyne on January 2, as he was about to board a boat to Nickerie, Suriname.
Reports also indicated that this was not the first time Maynard was found guilty of such a crime. He was previously found guilty of killing another woman, with whom he had shared a relationship and supposedly loved.
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