The family of murder victim Jamaal Robbins will have to wait another week to find out whether the man convicted of his murder, Cordell Farrington, will get the death penalty, thanks to the absence of a key piece of evidence to be considered during his sentencing.
Acting Chief Justice Anita Allen adjourned Farringtonﾒs sentencing to September 18 at 10am because the social enquiry had not yet been delivered, and also because Farringtonﾒs lawyer, Ramona Farquharson, needed more time to review the report.
Sporting pins showing a picture of Jamaal Robbins with his name emblazoned on the picture, Robbinsﾒ parents Edward Robbins and Christine Scott were present for the hearing on Monday afternoon.
After the adjournment, they both seemed patient and content that the system was working properly.
“Donﾒt worry about (the adjournment), itﾒs in Jesusﾒ hands,” Ms. Scott told the Journal. “He is in control.”
Robbins father, Edward, added that “the Lord is just and his ruling will be the right ruling.”
The crown intends to seek the death penalty for Farrington, who was convicted in August of Robbinsﾒ murder. This intention invokes a certain set of rules and procedures that must be followed.
Farrington would be only the second person sentenced after being convicted of murder in the wake of a Privy Council ruling that instituted discretionary sentencing; murder convict Maxo Tido was the first.
After Tido was sentenced to death in April, Chief Justice Sir Burton Hall circulated a “practice note” on sentencing convicted murderers to death. In the practice note, Sir Burton delineated the new procedure for sentencing a person to death in the era of discretionary sentencing.
Once the crown has given notice of intention to seek the death penalty, the trial judge must then convene a sentencing hearing at which the judge may receive such evidence as may be fit to inform the court as to the proper sentence to be passed, and may hear counsel on mitigating or other circumstances which may be relevant.
The new procedure allows for the sentencing judge to direct that the court be provided with a social welfare report, as Justice Allen has done. It was partly on account of the fact that both sides had not had time to adequately review this report that the sentencing hearing was adjourned.
There is, however, no provision in either Bahamian law or Sir Burtonﾒs practice note for mandatory, state-funded psychiatric evaluations of potential death penalty convicts.
This “defect” was identified by Edward Fitzgerald, a London lawyer who regularly appears on behalf of Bahamian defendants in matters before the Privy Council.
Justice Allen noted before adjourning the hearing that in lieu of a psychiatric report, the court would use the transcripts of the evidence given in the murder trial by both psychiatrists who testified ﾖ Drs. Michael Neville and Timothy Barrett.
Those doctors told the court during the trial that Farrington suffers from various personality disorders, but is not insane.
It took jurors about three hours to decide on a guilty verdict for Farrington once the case was given to them for deliberation on Friday, August 18.
Farrington is also charged with the murders of four Grand Bahama boys, but will stand trial for those murders in separate proceedings.
By: Quincy Parker, The Bahama Journal
