Privy Council rules for life imprisonment instead of death sentence

In October of 2003 thirty-seven year old Erlin White was convicted in the Supreme Court for the murder of popular businessman Dwayne Arnold.  Arnold, who was the proprietor of Electrical Zone Rebuilders on Cemetery Road, was shot and killed inside his store on February eleventh, 2002.  A jury found White, who was represented by attorney Oswald Twist, guilty of the crime and was sentenced to death by hanging.  Twist later appealed the sentence without presenting any arguments to support it; however, the Court of Appeal upheld the decision.  The case was then forwarded to the Privy Council in London where it has been for the past seven years until a judgment was delivered on Thursday by Sir John Dyson.  In court White’s legal representative, Tim Owen, argued the grounds of the appeal stating that the judge failed to adopt the correct approach to the imposition of a discretionary sentence of death.  Owen also pointed out that the judge failed to adhere to the sentencing guidelines put forward by Chief Justice Abdulai Conteh.  Justice Dyson subsequently reduced White’s death sentence to life in prison.  The ruling follows two others that were handed down last week in which the crime committed by Kirk Gordon was reduced from murder to manslaughter.  In the second ruling the Privy Council upheld the life sentence handed down on Miguel Herrera for the murder of Myrna Figueroa in 2007.