Man who killed son in 1988 must spend three more years in prison

DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

A 74-year-old man from Siparia, who killed his three-year-old son and dis­posed of his body al­most four decades ago, will have to serve over three more years in prison be­fore he can be re­leased.

Phi­nis War­ren was giv­en the death penal­ty when he was con­vict­ed of the heinous crime in 1991, but he was re-sen­tenced to­day by High Court Judge Hay­den St Clair-Dou­glas to 41 years in prison.

Jus­tice St Clair-Dou­glas agreed with the 45-year start­ing sen­tence that was sug­gest­ed by both War­ren's lawyer, Davina In­als­ingh, and pros­e­cu­tor Tri­cia Samuel.

He then gave a four-year dis­count based on War­ren's re­morse, ex­em­plary dis­ci­pli­nary record and at­tempts at re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion dur­ing his 37-year stay in prison.

War­ren was left with three years and five months left to serve as he was cred­it­ed for his pre­vi­ous time in cus­tody.

War­ren was con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing his son, Ronald Koy­lass, in Sep­tem­ber 1988.

Neigh­bours claimed that they sus­pect­ed Koy­lass, who was the youngest of War­ren's four chil­dren, was be­ing abused months be­fore his death as they saw him with sus­pi­cious bruis­es on sep­a­rate oc­ca­sions.

One neigh­bour who helped take care of the child made a re­port to po­lice af­ter she went to look for him at War­ren's home sev­er­al times and did not see him.

When War­ren was ini­tial­ly ques­tioned by po­lice, he claimed that he gave the child to a man named "Bel­con".

War­ren claimed that he did not know where the man lived and could not give a de­scrip­tion of him.

War­ren gave an­oth­er sto­ry when he was ar­rest­ed and in­ter­ro­gat­ed.

He claimed that he took the child when he went to do a land­scap­ing job and found him dead af­ter briefly leav­ing him un­su­per­vised.

He claimed that he pan­icked and de­cid­ed to dis­pose of the body by plac­ing it in a duf­fle bag, putting it on a bam­boo raft and re­leas­ing it in­to the Moo­ra Dam.

He claimed that he saw the raft at an­oth­er area of the shore of the dam the fol­low­ing day. He claimed that Koy­lass' body was miss­ing from the bag.

War­ren took homi­cide de­tec­tives to the area of the dam, but the child's body was nev­er found.

Koy­lass' sis­ter tes­ti­fied against their fa­ther and claimed that he, War­ren, beat her sib­ling be­fore she left to go to school on the last day she saw him alive.

She claimed that when she re­turned home, she saw her broth­er ly­ing un­con­scious on a bed and War­ren took him away.

She claimed that her fa­ther told her and her sib­lings that he had giv­en their broth­er to a man and in­struct­ed them to re­peat the sto­ry if ques­tioned.

War­ren ap­pealed his con­vic­tion on the ba­sis that his tri­al was un­fair. How­ev­er, his chal­lenge was re­ject­ed by both the Court of Ap­peal and the Privy Coun­cil.

The sen­tence was even­tu­al­ly com­mut­ed to 75 years in prison based on the land­mark Ja­maican case of Pratt and Mor­gan, which pro­hibits the death penal­ty from be­ing car­ried out more than five years af­ter be­ing passed.

War­ren ap­plied to be re-sen­tenced based on a re­cent case in which the coun­try's high­est court ruled that pris­on­ers with com­mut­ed sen­tences should re­ceive de­fin­i­tive terms based on the unique cir­cum­stances of their cas­es in­stead of blan­ket sen­tences, as was passed on War­ren and oth­er mur­der ac­cused who es­caped ex­e­cu­tion.