“The State implores this honourable court not to allow convicted Sean Watson to see the light of day until he has served at least 25 years.”
Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Donna Babb-Agard SC made this submission in the No. 2 Supreme Court as she recommended a harsh custodial sentence for the man who stalked his estranged wife for months before breaking into her home and killing her in the bedroom they once shared.
Watson, 46, of Bannantyne Gardens, Christ Church, had previously pleaded guilty to non-capital murder in the stabbing death of 37-year-old Nicole Harrison-Watson on April 28, 2012.
Describing the killer’s actions as “calculated” and “heinous”, the DPP submitted a starting sentence of 35 years, calling the defence’s starting point of 25 to 30 years “way too lenient” in this matter.
“We must decide if we are not dealing with a man who is truly evil sitting in that dock,” she stressed.
As she identified Watson’s early guilty plea and the delay in bringing the matter to trial as two mitigating factors, the prosecutor told Justice Randall Worrell that the convicted man should not benefit from the full one-third discount or a seven-year discount for the delay suggested by Watson’s defence attorney Bryan Weekes.
“We offer a one-sixth discount in this matter,” she said, noting that Watson had not confessed at the earliest opportunity.
Babb-Agard added that a four-year deduction for the delay was reasonable given that most of the delay in bringing the matter to trial was due to the 16 adjournments requested by the defence.
Watson’s other mitigating factors, she said, were his previously clean record, his cooperation with the police, his expression of remorse and the testimony of his character witnesses.
Aggravating factors identified were his stalking of Harrison-Watson for months before the murder, his use of a hired car to do so, his purchase of tools in advance, breaking into her home and lying in wait for hours for her, his use of an offensive weapon, his decision to stab her again in the neck when he saw no blood from the first slash, that there was no provocation, and his behaviour after the crime – not calling an ambulance or police but leaving her to die.
Babb-Agard stated that the aggravating factors in this case heavily outweighed the mitigating factors, and submitted that the starting sentence should increase from 35 years.
“If we start at 35 years in prison, which the state is submitting to this honourable court is the only appropriate sentence in this case, then we start in upward mobility because of the heinous, meticulous, premeditated, calculated aggravating features in this case,” the prosecutor asserted.
