‘Empty pockets’

A High Court judge has chastised young men convicted of illegally having guns and ammunition for the financial burden they are placing on their families who are paying hefty court-ordered fines.

“Not a single case have I seen any of you being able to pay a fine, so you expense your mothers, your sisters, your fathers, the other relatives and friends. You deny your children the financial support they should have by having to pay that fine into the Consolidated Fund. You deny yourselves and your families the opportunity to progress,” Justice Carlisle Greaves said on Friday before slapping Chad Seymour McCollin of Rock Hall, St Thomas, with a $25 000 fine for possession of a semi-automatic 9mm Heckler and Koch firearm and 40 rounds of various calibre ammunition.

He noted that some people were withdrawing their savings from banks and credit unions to help convicted family members avoid prison, when these funds could be better spent on building an extra room or shop onto their family homes or to make deposits for land purchases.

“Yet you waste it with stupid guns in your pocket and wind up having to get somebody to bail you out, first to pay a lawyer probably $10 000 . . . and then you pay the Treasury. Alternately, [you] spend eight years up in prison wasting time and expensing the taxpayers, and no matter what we say to you all, you refuse to listen. You all feel a gun makes a man. That only happens in cowboy pictures cause these guns cost you either your life or your liberty,” the judge said.

In determining McCollin’s sentence, Justice Greaves gave a starting point of eight years, saying there were no aggravating or mitigating factors to the offence. Regarding the offender, he took into account McCollin’s youth, his lack of previous convictions, and his cooperation with the police, and therefore gave him a six-month discount.

He made further deductions for the convicted man’s early plea and the time he had spent on remand, leaving a prison term of four years.

Agreeing with the stance of the prosecutor, Principal State Counsel Neville Watson, and defence attorney Kyle Walkes that a fine would serve justice in this case, the judge fined McCollin $15 000 forthwith for the firearm charge and $10 000 in three months for the ammunition.

Failure to pay will result in him being imprisoned for four years.

According to the police report, officers carrying out investigations went to McCollin’s home as they had received information he had been given a bag by a man. McCollin directed the officers to a forested area in Gun Hill Road, St George and pointed to a tree saying he had hidden the bag next to it. Police retrieved a bag containing the firearm, two ski masks, gloves and seven magazines. He told the police, “I knew about the bag. I didn’t know what was inside it.”