DEREK ACHONG

Less than a year af­ter he was charged with shoot­ing a neigh­bour af­ter he in­ter­vened in a dis­pute, a 39-year-old Mara­bel­la man has been con­vict­ed and sen­tenced.

Ryan “Wabean” Her­nan­dez was con­vict­ed at the end of his judge-alone tri­al late last month and was sen­tenced by Jus­tice Lisa Ram­sumair-Hinds to a lit­tle over 15 years in prison.

Last De­cem­ber, Her­nan­dez was slapped with four charges re­lat­ed to the shoot­ing of his neigh­bour Nicholas Jones. His case was com­plet­ed in record time as he ben­e­fit­ted from the pro­vi­sions of the Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure Rules 2023 and the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act (AJI­PA), which were pro­claimed that month.

The rules, sim­i­lar to those im­ple­ment­ed to im­prove civ­il lit­i­ga­tion in 1998, seek to mod­ernise the pro­ce­dure for crim­i­nal cas­es and in­tro­duce sanc­tions for non-com­pli­ance by pros­e­cu­tors and de­fence at­tor­neys.

The leg­is­la­tion seeks to re­duce pro­tract­ed de­lays in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem by re­plac­ing lengthy pre­lim­i­nary en­quiries be­fore mag­is­trates with quick­er suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ings be­fore High Court Mas­ters.

Af­ter in­dict­ments were filed against Her­nan­dez in Feb­ru­ary and the suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing was com­plet­ed three months lat­er, his case was list­ed for tri­al. Last month, he elect­ed a judge-alone tri­al. The tri­al was com­plet­ed in a week, and Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds took two weeks to ren­der her judg­ment.

Her­nan­dez was ac­cused of at­tack­ing Jones on De­cem­ber 2, last year. Jones went to a bar in their com­mu­ni­ty where he met Her­nan­dez, whom he had known for sev­er­al years and had no pre­vi­ous dis­pute, lim­ing with a group of friends. Jones re­port­ed­ly in­ter­vened in an ar­gu­ment be­tween two of Her­nan­dez’s friends, and he (Her­nan­dez) warned him to de­sist.

As Jones went in­to the bar to pur­chase a beer, Her­nan­dez drew a gun and shot him in the leg be­fore walk­ing away. The bul­let hit his cell phone be­fore pierc­ing his thigh. Jones man­aged to limp away and ride his bi­cy­cle to his sis­ter’s home a short dis­tance away. He went un­con­scious and was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal.

When he was even­tu­al­ly ar­rest­ed, Her­nan­dez was charged with shoot­ing with in­tent, pos­ses­sion of a firearm and am­mu­ni­tion, and dis­charg­ing a firearm in a pub­lic place, al­though the po­lice did not re­cov­er the gun used in the shoot­ing.

In de­cid­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate sen­tence for Her­nan­dez, Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds be­gan with start­ing points of ten years for shoot­ing with in­tent and the pub­lic dis­charge of the firearm and 15 years for the two firearm pos­ses­sion of­fences. She in­creased the sen­tences by a year based on Her­nan­dez hav­ing mul­ti­ple con­vic­tions for vi­o­lent of­fences for which he pre­vi­ous­ly served short prison sen­tences.

“Care­ful note of the dates of the of­fences, con­vic­tions, and sen­tences sug­gests that a soft hand in pun­ish­ment had lit­tle ef­fect on this pris­on­er in the past,” she said. She then de­duct­ed the nine months and 18 days he spent on re­mand since be­ing charged.

Her­nan­dez is ex­pect­ed to be re­leased in a lit­tle over 15 years, as Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds or­dered the sen­tences to run con­cur­rent­ly. He was rep­re­sent­ed by Shaun Mor­ris and Michael Mod­este of the Pub­lic De­fend­ers’ De­part­ment and was pros­e­cut­ed by Char­maine Samuel and Gilliana Guy of the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP).