In­dar­jit Seu­raj

For­mer Po­lice Con­sta­ble Dave Bur­nett, who was con­vict­ed of shoot­ing to death a pa­tron at a Ch­aguara­mas fete sev­en years ago, was sen­tenced yes­ter­day to 15 years jail with hard labour. Last Mon­day marked five years since Bur­nett, 39, of St Babb's, Bel­mont, was con­vict­ed of the mur­der of 18-year-old Kevin Cato and sen­tenced to death. When he ap­peared be­fore the Court of Ap­peal yes­ter­day, his con­vic­tion for mur­der was sub­sti­tut­ed with manslaugh­ter. Al­though he was re­moved from Death Row with the judg­ment of the court, he was ev­i­dent­ly dis­pleased with the new sen­tence.

He shook his head when the sen­tence was passed and was over­heard say­ing he want­ed a "fresh tri­al."

He was rep­re­sent­ed at the ap­pel­late court by at­tor­neys Is­rael Khan, SC, and Ul­ric Sker­ritt. Dana See­ta­hal, SC, and Lean­na See­ta­hal ap­peared for the state. Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie, who led the pan­el, al­so com­pris­ing Jus­tices Al­ice Yorke-Soo Hon and Ra­jen­dra Nar­ine, said while the facts sug­gest­ed Bur­nett was slapped first, he need­ed to ex­er­cise "some re­straint." Ac­cord­ing to Archie, the ap­pel­lant in­stead al­lowed the sit­u­a­tion to es­ca­late af­ter he was pushed. The Chief Jus­tice not­ed par­ty­go­ers must ex­pect to ac­ci­den­tal­ly get their feet "mashed" and "bumped."

He said, how­ev­er, there must be a high­er thresh­old of tol­er­ance from po­lice of­fi­cers. Khan sub­mit­ted the jus­tice of the case meant a ten-year prison term for the for­mer cop. But See­ta­hal (Dana) con­tend­ed guid­ance from the ju­di­cia­ry's sen­tenc­ing hand­book dic­tat­ed a sen­tence of be­tween 15 and 20 years. Bur­nett, who had served 13 un­blem­ished years in the Po­lice Ser­vice, was con­vict­ed on March 21, 2006.

Cato, of Chin Chin Road, Cunu­pia, was shot dead on Jan­u­ary 24, 2004 by Bur­nett at the Out­ra­geous in Red fete at Pier 1, Ch­aguara­mas.

He was on un­der­cov­er du­ty at the fete when he whipped out his firearm and shot Cato dur­ing a con­fronta­tion. Wit­ness­es tes­ti­fied Bur­nett bragged, "Yeah, I is po­lice. I is po­lice," af­ter pulling the trig­ger.

Bur­nett, who was as­signed to the West­ern Di­vi­sion at the time of the in­ci­dent, had been in­car­cer­at­ed since Ju­ly 2005.

MOR­E­IN­FO

On June 9, 2004, PC Dave Bur­nett was com­mit­ted to stand tri­al for killing Cato. Re­tired Chief Mag­is­trate Sher­man Mc­Ni­colls had dis­missed the charge of mur­der and or­dered a new tri­al for manslaugh­ter.

But af­ter re­view­ing the ev­i­dence in the case over one year lat­er, then Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Ge­of­frey Hen­der­son in­dict­ed Bur­nett for the mur­der in Ju­ly, 2005. Bur­nett was con­vict­ed of the Cato's mur­der on March 21, 2006. He pe­ti­tioned to the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Lon­don Privy Coun­cil and on No­vem­ber 4, 2009, the mat­ter was re­mit­ted to the Court of Ap­peal for de­ter­mi­na­tion. The coun­cil ruled that both tri­al judge Ian Brooks and the Court of Ap­peal had erred by not putting the is­sue of provo­ca­tion to the ju­ry.