Homeless man gets 16 years for killing street dweller in botched robbery

A home­less man, who ad­mit­ted to killing a fel­low street dweller while at­tempt­ing to rob him of his co­caine stash, has been sen­tenced to a lit­tle over 16 years in prison.

In Feb­ru­ary, Fran­cis Roland was al­lowed to plead guilty to felony mur­der based on a plea agree­ment with the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP).

Un­der the felony mur­der rule, the manda­to­ry death penal­ty for mur­der is waived in cir­cum­stances where death oc­curs dur­ing the com­mis­sion of a less­er crim­i­nal of­fence, which in most cas­es is rob­bery. 

He was sen­tenced by High Court Judge Lisa Ram­sumair-Hinds ear­li­er this month. 

Roland was ac­cused of mur­der­ing Ray­mond “Dou­ble Ug­ly” Quee­ley in Feb­ru­ary 2018. 

Quee­ley’s body was found at Man­ick Street in Ch­agua­nas.

A post-mortem re­vealed that he died of blunt force trau­ma to his head. 

Roland was ar­rest­ed af­ter he was cap­tured at­tack­ing Quee­ley with a length of wood by CCTV cam­eras in the area where his body was found. 

Roland told po­lice that he and an­oth­er man de­cid­ed to rob Quee­ley of his co­caine and mon­ey. 

He claimed that his co-con­spir­a­tor did not agree to hit Quee­ley with the wood, but he chose to do so dur­ing the at­tack, al­though he did not in­tend for the blow to be fa­tal. 

He ad­mit­ted that Quee­ley did not have any co­caine or cash on him, but claimed that he took some bot­tles Quee­ley had col­lect­ed.

He claimed that he sold the bot­tles for $80 and split the pro­ceeds with a woman. 

In sen­tenc­ing Roland, Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds ac­cept­ed the 28-year start­ing sen­tence that was agreed to by pros­e­cu­tors and Roland’s lawyers un­der the plea deal. 

Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds de­cid­ed against grant­i­ng any dis­count based on Roland’s dys­func­tion­al up­bring­ing and his clean dis­ci­pli­nary record on re­mand as she not­ed that such mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors were off­set by his lengthy crim­i­nal record for drug pos­ses­sion, house break­ing and lar­ce­ny. 

“I am of the view that the mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors ef­fec­tive­ly can­cel out the ag­gra­vat­ing ef­fect of the un­favourable crim­i­nal record,” she said. 

While judges typ­i­cal­ly grant a one-third dis­count for an ear­ly guilty plea, Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds de­cid­ed to grant a high­er two-fifths dis­count based on the fact that Roland main­tained his guilt since be­ing charged. 

“This is one of the few cas­es which pass through the ‘Fast Track Court’, where a pris­on­er in­di­cates and con­sis­tent­ly main­tains an in­ten­tion to plead guilty,” she said. 

Af­ter de­duct­ing the time Roland spent on re­mand be­fore his guilty plea was ac­cept­ed, he was left with a re­main­ing sen­tence of eight years and eight months. 

“I am sat­is­fied that the fi­nal sen­tence af­ter all rel­e­vant cal­cu­la­tions is not ex­ces­sive,” she said. 

She en­cour­aged Roland to use his re­main­ing time in prison to con­tin­ue to par­tic­i­pate in re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grammes. 

“He ap­pears to have set a pos­i­tive tra­jec­to­ry in the time al­ready spent, and con­tin­ued de­ten­tion af­fords him the op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­tin­ue his process of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion in an at­mos­phere of re­morse and ac­count­abil­i­ty,” she said. 

Roland was pros­e­cut­ed by Char­maine Samuel.