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Friday, May 9, 2025

Man serving life sentence for killing maxi conductor for $2 to be resentenced

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736 days ago
20230504

Derek Achong

A High Court Judge has quashed the life sen­tence be­ing served by a 46-year-old man of Tu­na­puna, con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing a maxi taxi con­duc­tor over a $2 fare more than two decades ago.

Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad made the or­der as he par­tial­ly up­held a con­sti­tu­tion­al claim from Glen­roy Bish­op.

In Jan­u­ary 2002, Bish­op was con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing Michael Cabral on De­cem­ber 21, 1994.

Bish­op, for­mer­ly of Ma­coya Set­tle­ment, re­port­ed­ly dropped off at Basilon Street, in Tu­na­puna and did not pay the fare.

Cabral chal­lenged Bish­op, who drew a firearm and shot him in his head at point-blank range.

Bish­op was ar­rest­ed by po­lice while flee­ing the scene.

Bish­op lost his ap­peals be­fore the Court of Ap­peal and the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil but the lat­ter com­mut­ed his manda­to­ry death penal­ty to life im­pris­on­ment as the five-year dead­line for car­ry­ing out the sen­tence, un­der the Ja­maican case of Pratt and Mor­gan, had elapsed.

In his law­suit, Bish­op is re­ly­ing on a more re­cent land­mark de­ci­sion from last year, in which the coun­try’s high­est ap­pel­late court ruled that con­vict­ed mur­der­ers who ben­e­fit from com­mu­ta­tion should not re­ceive au­to­mat­ic life sen­tences but rather de­fined sen­tences based on the unique cir­cum­stances of their cas­es.

Dozens of mur­der con­victs with ef­fec­tive­ly com­mut­ed sen­tences have pend­ing sim­i­lar con­sti­tu­tion­al claims in a bid to be re­sen­tenced.

In re­sponse to the law­suit, the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al claimed that Jus­tice Seep­er­sad did not have ju­ris­dic­tion to hear the case as the re­cent prece­dent set by the Privy Coun­cil is al­leged­ly in­con­sis­tent with its pre­vi­ous de­ci­sion in Bish­op’s case.

The po­si­tion was re­ject­ed by Jus­tice Seep­er­sad, who said it was with­out mer­it.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said the sug­ges­tion that Bish­op should ap­proach the Privy Coun­cil for re­lief was il­log­i­cal.

He al­so stat­ed that while cit­i­zens may be crit­i­cal of Bish­op’s case and oth­ers cur­rent­ly be­fore the court, they had to un­der­stand that even con­vict­ed crim­i­nals have to be af­ford­ed cer­tain pro­tec­tions un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion.

As part of his de­ci­sion in the case, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad trans­ferred it to the Supreme Court Reg­is­ter for it to be as­signed to a col­league in the crim­i­nal di­vi­sion, who would con­duct the re­sen­tenc­ing.

Bish­op was rep­re­sent­ed by Christophe Ro­driguez and Joash Hug­gins, while Nicol Yee-Fung, Ebo Jones and Ryan Grant rep­re­sent­ed the AG’s Of­fice.


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