Jeffrey Perry v R

• Jurisdiction: Jamaica
• Judge: McIntosh JA
• Judgment Date: 30 March 2012
• Neutral Citation: JM 2012 CA 30
• Docket Number: SUPREME COURT CRIMINAL APPEAL NO 10/2009
• Court: Court of Appeal (Jamaica)
• Date: 30 March 2012

Jeffrey Perry

and

R

[2012] JMCA Crim 17

Before:

The Hon Mrs Justice Harris P (Ag)

The Hon Mrs Justice McIntosh JA

The Hon Mr Justice Brooks JA

SUPREME COURT CRIMINAL APPEAL NO 10/2009

JAMAICA

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL

CRIMINAL LAW - Murder - Death penalty - Whether sentence was too harsh in the circumstances - Whether the appellant's obsessive compulsive disorder was to be taken into account - Prospects of the appellant's rehabilitation

Ravil Golding for the appellant

Miss Paula Llewelyn , QC, Director of Public Prosecutions and Miss Yanique Gardener for the Crown

McIntosh JA

1 Mr Jeffrey Perry was convicted on 18 December 2008 in the Home Circuit Court on an indictment containing three counts for the murders of Sue-Ann Gordon, Shadeece Williams and Dwayne Davidson, respectively. He was sentenced on 16 January 2009 to suffer death in the mariner authorized by law in relation to each murder. As told by their mother, Sonia Bailey-Williams, in her evidence at the trial, at the time of their deaths, Sue-Ann was 13 years old, Dwayne was 15 years old and Shadeece was a mere four years of age. They as well as the appellant resided in Kilancholly District in the parish of St Mary and on the night of 27 January 2005 when Mrs Bailey-Williams left them at home at about 8:30, to make some preparations at her church for an event which was to take place there the following day, little did she know that she was taking leave of them for the last time. On her return to her home some time after 12 midnight she was met by a sight which she will no doubt never forget and so a mother's anguish began.

2 The details of the gruesome event which resulted in the deaths of these three innocent children came from the lips of the appellant himself in a statement given to the police under caution and in answers to questions put to him by the police. He described how in response to voices, presumably in his head, he went to the home of Mrs Bailey-Williams, a cousin of his whose home he was well accustomed to visiting, gained access and relentlessly stabbed his young cousins to death, even as Sue-Ann begged him not to kill her and Shadeece begged him not to stab her. Sue-Ann, the appellant said, had managed to pull the door and run outside but he pursued her and stabbed her again even though by then she had collapsed. That, in brief, was his account of how he took the lives of his three young cousins that night.

3 Although at first, the appellant sought to appeal against his conviction and sentence, in both his oral and written submissions his attorney-at-law, Mr Ravil Golding, quite correctly in our view, abandoned the appeal against conviction and pursued the appeal against sentence only. He sought and was granted leave to argue one supplementary ground of appeal in which the complaint was that the learned trial judge failed to apply the correct principles when imposing the death penalty. He highlighted four areas of deficiency in the learned trial judge's approach to the sentencing process, namely, her failure to indicate which features of the case disclosed exceptional circumstances to warrant the sentence of death, her consideration of the absence of remorse which, according to the appellant's complaint, was irrelevant, her failure to take into account the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) with which he was diagnosed and, finally, the learned trial judge's failure to give adequate consideration to any reasonable prospect of the appellant's rehabilitation.

4 In his written submissions Mr Golding contended that the sentence of death was not the correct one in all the circumstances of this case. He relied on a line of authorities which in recent times have set guidelines for murder cases where the death penalty is an option, Peter Dougal v R [2011] JMCA Crim 13, being one such case in...