Yet another murderer and his lawyer seem to be jacking around the legal system in an attempt to minimize the punishment that criminals get in The Bahamas.<\/p>\n
Ellison Smith, convicted in 1999 of the 1997 murder of FNM cabinet minister Charles Virgil, appeared in the Court of Appeal yesterday along with his attorney, Jiaram Mangra, for a status hearing before Justices Christopher Blackman, Abdulai Conteh and Neville Adderley.<\/p>\n
The key word here is “convicted”.\u00a0\u00a0 It has already been determined in a Bahamian court of law [sic], that Mr Smith did indeed murder a Cabinet Minister.<\/p>\n
What is he doing back in court?\u00a0 Shouldn’t he be hanging from the gallows or at least be in prison for the rest of his life?<\/p>\n
What kind of a judges would allow these games to be played?\u00a0 No wonder our court system is backlogged and dysfunctional. Because we have judges who continually allow crafty lawyers to skew the legal system in their murderous client’s favour.<\/p>\n
This time, the learned judges [sic] have decided that this murderer deserves more appeals, and they continually push the date of the appeal trial further and further ahead.\u00a0 Smith’s lawyers love that – because they know if they can stretch this out a little longer, their client will be freed because he didn’t have a fair trial within the time period allowed.<\/p>\n
And the stupid reason the man gets more time?\u00a0 Because there are some questions about his other <\/em>life sentence, the one he is serving for armed robbery.<\/p>\n Defence lawyer Mangra says he can’t find any record of the life sentence for armed robbery after doing his own research.<\/p>\n We wonder if that doesn’t have something to do with corrupt court clerks who specialize in making records disappear.<\/p>\n Meanwhile the Crown prosecutor, Vernal Collie noted that Smith had submitted an appeal of his armed robbery life sentence that was heard and dismissed in 2000 by the appellate court. He noted that the matter was separate and apart from the present appeal before the courts.<\/p>\n Now get this… the judges “were of the view that the new information would have to be taken into account when dealing with Smith\u2019s appeal against his sentence for murder.”<\/p>\n And why is that?\u00a0 The man was convicted of murder… let’s just go with that and throw him in prison until he dies.\u00a0 Or hang him up in Rawson Square.<\/p>\n As a result of this “interesting” decision,\u00a0 the court, the crown and defence counsel agreed to an adjournment until April 9 to allow for further research before dealing with the appeal.<\/p>\n Smith is seeking to have his punishment of life imprisonment reduced to a determined number of years in the hope that he could someday be eligible for early release.\u00a0 He’s lucky he wasn’t hanged in 1999.<\/p>\n What do you think of this nonsense?\u00a0 Leave your comments below.<\/p>\n