Appeal Court reduces attempted murder convict’s sentence by 3 years
A man who was sentenced to 13 years behind bars for attempting to kill another man will now service 10 years after the Court of Appeal reduced his sentence by three years.
In 2016, a mixed 12-member jury found Hansel Lewis guilty of attempting to murder Chris Burrowes on New Year’s Day 2013. High Court Judge Brassington Reynolds imposed the 13-year jail term.
However, not pleased with the sentence, Lewis, through Attorney-at-Law Murseline Bacchus, moved to the Appeal Court, arguing that his conviction was unsafe as the Judge failed to gave the jury the appropriate directions on how to deal with the identification evidence.
However, Chancellor of the Judiciary (ag) Justice Yonette Cummings-Edwards, in handing down the court’s ruling, noted that the trial Judge gave the jury adequate directions on the issue.
As for his sentence, the Court held that a jail sentence of 10 years, minus time already served, would be more fitting in his case.
Reports are that the men were consuming alcoholic beverages on the day in question. Burrowes claimed that Lewis was smoking “something which was high-scented” and asked him to remove it from next to him.
Burrowes subsequently left the bar and walked some distance to urinate. He was in the process of zipping up his pants when Lewis removed a two-inch broad, plastic-handled knife from his left side pocket and quickly stabbed him in his right-side neck.
Burrowes was taken to the New Amsterdam Hospital, where he was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and remained a patient for almost a month before he was discharged.
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