Jail sentence for taxi driver’s killer reduced from 80 to 35 years

The jail sentence for a man convicted of the January 2010 murder of a taxi driver whose burnt remains were found on the Mocha Access Road, East Bank Demerara (EBD), was reduced from 80 to 35 years by the Court of Appeal on Wednesday.

Following a trial before Justice Navindra Singh in 2015, 51-year-old Balram Singh, formerly of Agricola, EBD, was found guilty of murdering Bhomeshwar Sukhdeo. He was subsequently sentenced to 80 years in prison.
Media reports are that Sukhdeo was killed between January 19 and January 27, 2010. He had been kidnapped and robbed of his vehicle. His charred remains were discovered in Mocha, EBD, days after he had gone missing.
He was reportedly shot to the head with a .38 revolver. It was reported that on January 19, 2010, Balram Singh and another man had gone to Georgetown and hired Sukhdeo to take them to Agricola, EBD, where the former resided.
They shot the man to his head and drove his body to Eccles, EBD, where they dumped it in some bushes. They later retrieved the body from Eccles and took it to Mocha, where they burnt it before escaping in Sukhdeo’s car.
Dissatisfied with the decision of the lower court, Balram Singh, through his lawyer, Nigel Hughes, filed an appeal against his conviction and sentence. Among other things, he argued that the initial sentence was manifestly excessive.
He argued, too, that the base sentence of 60 years used by the trial Judge in arriving at a final sentence, was nine years shy of Guyana’s life expectancy, and without jurisprudential basis. He further argued that the Judge did not adequately put his defence to the jury for consideration.
Delivering the ruling of the appellate court was the Chancellor of the Judiciary, Justice Yonette Cummings-Edwards, who said that with no proper reason to set aside the conviction, the court would only allow the appeal on the issue of sentencing.
The Court of Appeal rejected Balram Singh’s argument that his conviction was unreasonable and cannot be supported having regards to the evidence. Justices of Appeal Dawn Gregory-Barnes and Rishi Persaud and the Chancellor, however, agreed that the sentence imposed by the trial Judge was manifestly excessive.
In the appeal court’s ruling, it was revealed that, to the base sentence, Justice Singh added on 10 years because the crime was premeditated and another 10 years because a robbery was committed during the commission of the murder.
The Court of Appeal, in this case, said it was guided by the principle that sentencing is entirely within the discretion of the trial Judge and is not to be interfered with unless it is found to be excessive or wrong in principle.
“As the Appeal Court, we must not be inclined to alter sentences because we believe a different sentence should be imposed,” said the Chancellor, while adding that the purpose of sentencing includes retribution, rehabilitation, and crime prevention.

“Extremely out of character”
The Appeal Court held that a base sentence of 60 years was “extremely out of character”. The Judges said that the offence is serious given how it was carried out and highlighted that Sukhdeo was abducted, killed, and then burnt.
With reference to various case laws, the Court of Appeal held that a sentence of 35 years is most suited in Balram Singh’s case. He was given full credit for the time he spent in pre-trial custody in keeping with the directives outlined in the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) case of Romeo Da Costa Hall vs The Queen.
Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions Diana Kaulesar-O’Brien appeared for the State. Despite the unanimous guilty verdict, Balram Singh had always maintained his innocence. “Your Honour, with all due respect, I don’t have anything to say at this point. “I didn’t murder nobody,” an expressionless Singh had told Justice Singh. (G1)