Judge will decide how to re-sentence youth

JUSTICE Nolan Bureaux will next week Tuesday decide on how a consent order is to be formulated in the sentencing of a 15-year-old boy for murder at the “State’s Pleasure.” The State has agreed that the sentence was unconstitutional. But despite the State’s concession with attorneys for the boy that the sentence should have instead be “Court’s Pleasure,” the judge indicated his intention to issue his own ruling.

The boy, Ottis Melville, was sentenced at the “State’s Pleasure” in 1996 by Justice Paula Mae Weekes after he was found guilty of murder. He was too young to have the death sentence imposed on him. Yesterday, Justice Bureaux heard legal arguments in the San Fernando High Court on an application by attorneys Mark Seepersad and Gerald Ramdeen, for monetary compensation for the boy. Ramdeen submitted that Melville was entitled to damages by the mere fact that a constitutional breach was committed in sentencing him. Justice Bureaux said he must also take into account the public interest in the matter — the fact that crime was committed and the public’s outcry against the offence of murder.