10 years jail for manslaughter

“He was not a simpleton.

He is not a fool,” the judge said of Jawahir, as he told him that his acts on Easter Sunday April 12, 2009, at Manzanilla Main Road, near the 11-1/4 mile mark, would attract a severe sentence. Jawahir was sentenced to 18 years hard labour but the seven years spent in prison awaiting trial were deducted, leaving ten years and four months which he began serving from yesterday. Although the trial judge was critical of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) for having the court embark on a Maximum Sentence Indication exercise prior to the trial, he understood why the State did not accept a guilty plea from Jawahir since the evidence at the trial painted an entirely different picture as to what took place on the day of the incident.

According to the prosecution’s case, Jawahir chopped Thomas four times with a cutlass, almost severing one of his arms, just after 7 pm on the day in question.

Jawahir was intoxicated at the time. Jawahir who was defended by attorneys Michelle Solomon and Trevor Clarke, never disputed that he chopped Thomas, telling police at the time that he did so to help out his cousin who was being beaten by Thomas.

He had also admitted to having threatened to planass Thomas with a cutlass. According to Jawahir’s defence, he saw his cousin being beaten by Thomas with a piece of wood. One of Thomas’ friends was also involved in the beating incident. It was at this point Jawahir intervened and chopped Thomas. But the judge pointed out that Jawahir would not have known what was taking place with his cousin and his friends but that he had, “gone looking for trouble and found it.” The events started off with one of Jawahir’s friends interfering with a crab that was thrown into the tray of the pickup in which Thomas and another man were hitching a ride. Justice St Clair-Douglas said although the court accepted a manslaughter verdict brought back by the jury, the court could not turn away from the nature of the injuries Thomas sustained, which were described by the pathologist as defensive wounds. The prosecution represented by attorney Stacy Lalloo Chong.