‘No Bargain’

Likening courts to “bargain basement stores” due to the multiple discounts given on prison sentences, Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Alliston Seale SC was adamant on Wednesday that murder sentences must start at 40 years.

“We must treat serious matters with serious punishment. I am of the view that since we have no guidelines on murder thus far, that no murder conviction should start under the sentence of 40 years. None! If we do not do it right, we will end up with problems that will burden us for years to come,” he said, while submitting a 40-year starting sentence for convicted murderer Anthonia Windgrove Ellis of Denny Road, Thorpes, St James.

Seale insisted that high prison terms must be given for such matters to act as a deterrent and for the court to be viewed as taking such crimes seriously.

“What I am saying is that in this age of deductions, reductions, and discounts, I wonder sometimes if we are in a bargain basement store with people’s lives. You get a discount for pleading guilty. You do wrong and admit you do wrong and get one-third from the time you start. You have a good record, you get piece more off. [The case] took too long to come up, you get another piece off, and it keeps going down, down, down,” he said.

The senior counsel then explained that as one year on the Barbados Prison Service calendar was nine months, convicted persons were getting one-fourth off every year behind bars.

“So, a relative who comes here and sits and is already saddened by all of the cutting and all the other bargains you get at the store, after their disappointment and they walk through the door and they say, ‘Well, he get 20 years’, they are surprised to see him walking the streets before they look around twice because up there they get another discount. And we expect to dissuade people from committing crime?” he added.

Although admitting that there were opportunities for rehabilitation, the deputy DPP said the only way to deal with certain people was to adopt “an eye for an eye” stance.

“You can get too angry and do the wrong thing, so there’s a possibility for rehabilitation, but you cannot turn such that society has become so soft on crime that you seem to get a badge of honour for doing nonsense and for killing people, that you get two or three killings so people walking around like cowboys with notches in their guns for how many people they kill,” he stressed.

Ellis was found guilty by a jury of the fatal shooting of 31-year-old Lorenzo Joseph on February 16, 2019, in New Orleans, St Michael.

Outlining the aggravating factors of the offence, Seale noted that it was done in broad daylight, in a neighbourhood where many people, including children, were nearby, resulting in them scrambling for their lives and another man being shot as Ellis “peppered” the area while in pursuit of Joseph. No mitigating factors were found.

The prosecutor therefore asked for the sentence to be raised by three years and submitted that Ellis should serve 43 years behind bars for the murder.

Asking for mercy from the court, the convicted man who represented himself said his actions on that day were not premeditated but were based on fear. He also claimed that he was not the only one shooting at Joseph that day, was not the one who had killed him, and had not endangered anyone else’s life.

Reading a letter of apology, he asked Joseph’s family and his own for forgiveness.

“I am sorry for the way I conducted myself on February 16, 2019,” Ellis said.

Sentencing will take place on June 7.