Four Hanover men lose murder appeal

Four men who were convicted for fatally stabbing 18-year-old Jovine Jones of Claremont, Hanover, 42 times on October 9, 2009 and dumping his body beside a river have lost their appeal to have their murder convictions overturned.

The Court of Appeal described the murder as heinous and gruesome and emphasised that the deceased was "essentially butchered".

The appellants are Alex Hemmings, Travis Findlater, Hockeal Scott and Denny Williams of Claremont.

Jones, who was also known as 'Tyson' and 'Heartless' was stabbed 35 times to the front of the neck and the other wounds were to the chest and left side of the back.

The men had given cautioned statements in which they admitted that Scott stabbed Jones and they all dragged the body through bushes to the river. 

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However, at the trial in the Hanover Circuit Court the men, who were each 19 years old at the time of the offence, said that the police had assaulted and threatened them and so they were forced to give the statements. 

They said in the statements, which were given in the presence of lawyers, that on the night of the murder, the deceased had confronted them about a missing gun and told them that men from the Bone Crusher Gang were coming to shoot them up as well as their families. 

The men were convicted of the murder on November 21, 2016 and sentenced on January 9, 2017 to life imprisonment. The judge ordered Scott to serve 30 years before he was eligible for parole, while the other men were ordered to serve 25 years before parole.

One of the grounds of appeal was that the judge erred in not upholding the no-case submissions and freeing the men based on the circumstances in which the cautioned statements were given.

King's Counsel Lord Anthony Gifford and attorney-at-law Hugh Thompson, instructed by Gifford, Thompson & Shields who represented the appellants, had also submitted that the judge should have left manslaughter for the  jury's consideration in the case of  Williams, Findlater and Hemmings.

Crown Counsel Paula-Sue Ferguson and Carolyn Wright said in response that a direction in manslaughter would not have been appropriate because the evidence pointed to the men as accessories to the murder.

The court comprising Justice Paulette Williams, Justice Carol Edwards and Justice Nicole Simmons said that although Scott inflicted the injuries, there was no evidence that the other men distanced themselves from Scott's actions.

The court, in dismissing the appeal last week,  deducted one month, two weeks and five days from the sentences for the time the men were in custody before they were sentenced.

-Barbara Gayle