Judge signals tougher firearm sentences

People convicted of firearm-related offences in Barbados may no longer be able to avoid prison through the payment of fines if gun crime does not decline, High Court Judge Justice Pamela Beckles has warned.

She said: “Going forward you all are hardly going to get fines for firearm offences. That is the reality of it. If the situation doesn’t turn around in Barbados, these are going to become things of the past.”

But the  judge expressed her desire to see fines remain an option in certain cases.

“You have to deal with each case on its own unique set of facts. Sometimes there is a person who has a licensed firearm in the household, and they die and their wife or children don’t know that they should turn back in the firearm and they hold on to it. I don’t think that person should be treated in the same fashion as someone else who is out there doing foolishness with a firearm. That’s how I feel and nobody can change me from feeling that way, but we try for uniformity and consistency. 

“We don’t want it to appear as though one judge is doing one thing and another something different because that is how you will get judge shopping because people will then want to go for the judge that they consider more lenient and we do not want to encourage judge shopping.”

She was speaking in the No. 5 Supreme Court during the sentencing hearing for first-time gun offender Inyah Jones.

Jones, of Thorpes Main Road, St James, admitted to having a firearm and four rounds of ammunition on September 16, 2022.

Defence attorney Kyle Walkes urged the court to consider that there was no evidence that the firearm had been used in the commission of an offence, that it was not a high-powered gun, and his client’s previously clean record.

Walkes said: “I also ask that his age of 18 at the time of the offence is considered mitigating as at that age he is less likely to make decisions that more mature persons would make. He is deeply remorseful and has changed the friends he used to hang around and is working.”

He urged the court to consider a fine with a reasonable amount of time in which to pay, considering Jones’ means.

But Acting Senior State Counsel Maya Kellman said: “While the firearm was not on the high-powered end, it only takes one round to kill someone.”

The prosecutor said aggravating factors were the prevalence of such offences in society and that the gun was found in a public place. But in Jones’s favour, she noted the weapon’s recovery. She suggested that Jones be given a starting sentence of 10 years for the firearm and nine years for the ammunition.

The prosecutor also said that Jones’ co-operation with police, early plea, lack of previous convictions and age at the time outweighed his act of concealing the firearm under a neighbour’s bed, and that there should be a downward adjustment of the starting points.

Kellman added that deductions should be made for his plea and the 242 days Jones spent on remand at Dodds. She added that the alternative of a $25 000 fine for the firearm, $15 000 of which was due forthwith, and $4 000 for the ammunition would be appropriate to meet justice in the matter.

Advising Jones that his fine would be higher than $20 000, Justice Beckles explained that, by substituting the remaining time of a custodial sentence with a fine after deductions were made, judges were granting “a favour” to first-time offenders.

She said: “We substitute the balance of the time remaining with a fine, so you do not start deducting anything from that fine. We are doing them a favour by not sending them to prison, and substituting the remaining time of imprisonment with a fine.”

She outlined that, under the amended Firearms Act, first-time offenders could receive between 10 and 20 years for such offences.

(JB)