The Chronicle Herald (Provincial)
Downey pleads guilty to manslaughter
Young man was awaiting trial on charge of second-degree murder
A young Halifax man has pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the June 2018 killing of Jamie Bishop in a drive-by shooting in Eastern Passage.
Rae'heem Downey, 23, was awaiting a jury trial next month on a charge of seconddegree murder.
Downey pleaded guilty to the lesser charge Tuesday, when he appeared in Nova Scotia Supreme Court in Halifax via a video link from the Dartmouth jail.
Crown attorney Carla Ball told the court the guilty plea was based on “a partial defence of provocation ... which reduces murder to manslaughter.”
Justice Denise Boudreau scheduled Downey's sentencing for June 21. Because a firearm was used in the killing, the offence carries a minimum penalty of at least four years in prison.
Ball, co-crown counsel Jamie Van Wart and defence lawyers Trevor Mcguigan and Jennifer Macdonald will have a joint recommendation for the judge's consideration.
Bishop, 21, was walking with a teenage girl on Hornes Road on June 18, 2018, just before 12:45 a.m. when a shot was fired from a car that pulled up beside them.
An RCMP officer drove Bishop to the Dartmouth General Hospital, where he died.
Bishop had moved to metro from Tanners Settlement, Lunenburg County, about six months earlier.
Downey admits shooting Bishop with a .22-calibre firearm.
A six-page agreed statement of facts about the shooting was filed with the court Tuesday but was not read into the record.
Downey has been in custody since August 2018, when he was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. The Crown downgraded the charge following a preliminary inquiry in Dartmouth provincial court in May 2019.
He also pleaded guilty Tuesday to breaching a 2017 probation order by failing to keep the peace and be of good behaviour. He will be sentenced on that charge June 21 as well.
Downey was denied bail in Supreme Court last October.
Downey's older brother, Markel Jason Downey, 25, stood trial recently in Supreme Court on a charge of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder from a triple-shooting home invasion in Cole Harbour in November 2014. The jury deliberated for about four hours before acquitting him May 1 on all three charges.