Second re-sentencing ordered for man convicted of killing 4-year-old

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

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The Court of Ap­peal has or­dered a sec­ond re-sen­tenc­ing for a St James man con­vict­ed of rap­ing and mur­der­ing a four-year-old girl as a teenag­er, af­ter pre­vi­ous­ly es­cap­ing the manda­to­ry death penal­ty.

In a judg­ment de­liv­ered Thurs­day, Ap­pel­late Judges Nolan Bereaux, Maria Wil­son and Ge­of­frey Hen­der­son up­held an ap­peal by Pe­ter Matthews chal­leng­ing the 50-year prison sen­tence im­posed for the es­pe­cial­ly heinous crime.

Matthews, of Up­per Bournes Road, St James, was con­vict­ed of the bru­tal mur­der of Roslyn Lu­cas. On Au­gust 26, 1976, Lu­cas’ moth­er left her with a neigh­bour while she went to work. When she re­turned the fol­low­ing morn­ing, she found her daugh­ter dead in the apart­ment. A post-mortem re­vealed that the child had been raped and died of heart fail­ure.

Matthews, who lived near­by, was charged af­ter al­leged­ly con­fess­ing to the mur­der. He claimed he had at­tacked the child while she was sleep­ing and did not in­tend to kill her.

In 1984, Matthews was con­vict­ed by a ju­ry and sen­tenced to death by hang­ing. He lost ap­peals against his con­vic­tion in both the Court of Ap­peal and the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil. His death sen­tence was lat­er com­mut­ed to life im­pris­on­ment un­der the land­mark Ja­maican case of Pratt and Mor­gan, which ruled that a death sen­tence could not be ex­e­cut­ed more than five years af­ter it was hand­ed down.

Matthews was re-sen­tenced last year fol­low­ing an­oth­er land­mark rul­ing that con­victs with com­mut­ed life sen­tences must re­ceive de­fin­i­tive prison terms based on the unique cir­cum­stances of their crimes.

Dur­ing the ap­peal, Matthews’ lawyers, Joseph Sookoo and Abi­gail Roach, ar­gued that the 50-year sen­tence was ex­ces­sive. They al­so high­light­ed that the judges at his tri­al and re-sen­tenc­ing failed to ad­e­quate­ly con­sid­er that Matthews was 17 years old at the time of the of­fence. They con­tend­ed that his ini­tial death sen­tence was un­law­ful and that he should have been giv­en a min­i­mum sen­tence with pe­ri­od­ic re­views, giv­en his mi­nor sta­tus at the time.

In the judg­ment, Jus­tice Wil­son not­ed that the re-sen­tenc­ing judge was pre­sent­ed with con­flict­ing in­for­ma­tion about Matthews’ age. While his lawyers as­sert­ed he was 17, his record­ed con­fes­sion stat­ed he was 19, and the judge based the re-sen­tenc­ing on the high­er age. Jus­tice Wil­son sug­gest­ed the judge should have al­lowed the de­fence to pro­vide a birth cer­tifi­cate to re­solve the is­sue.

“It is very un­for­tu­nate that the re-sen­tenc­ing judge did not ad­journ her de­ci­sion to ver­i­fy the ap­pel­lant’s cor­rect age at the time of the of­fence,” Jus­tice Wil­son said. “De­spite the trag­ic cir­cum­stances, the grav­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion re­quired cer­tain­ty on his age be­fore re-sen­tenc­ing.”

While the pan­el up­held Matthews’ ap­peal, it de­clined to set a new sen­tence, cit­ing the unique le­gal cir­cum­stances of his case. Jus­tice Wil­son ob­served that both the orig­i­nal death sen­tence and the sub­se­quent re-sen­tenc­ing were un­law­ful, cre­at­ing a le­gal co­nun­drum.

“What can our court do about this le­gal co­nun­drum? Does this mean that the ap­pel­lant is left in ‘le­gal lim­bo’ with­out a rem­e­dy?” Jus­tice Wil­son said. She ruled that a fresh re-sen­tenc­ing be­fore an­oth­er High Court judge was the best so­lu­tion, as it would al­low Matthews the right to ap­peal again.

“The Ap­peal Court should not re-sen­tence the ap­pel­lant it­self, as that would amount to im­pos­ing an orig­i­nal sen­tence and de­prive him of the op­tion to ap­peal,” Jus­tice Wil­son added.

The judges set a 21-day dead­line for Matthews’ re-sen­tenc­ing. The Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions was rep­re­sent­ed by Wayne Ra­jban­sie.