Regional News
T&T highway chase ends in death for criminal suspect CCJ strikes down mandatory death penalty for murder in Barbados
(Trinidad Express) A man who police say was wanted for several robberies and other firearm related offences in the Central police division was shot and killed on Wednesday.
Keon Moore, 24, was killed in a shoot-out with police on Solomon Hochoy highway around 4 pm.
Moore, of Circular Drive, Crown Trace, Enterprise, was shot as he tried to escape police who attempted to intercept his vehicle.
Officers of the Central Division had spotted Moore in Preysal, and he tried to evade them by heading south along the highway.
Police pursued Moore and the suspect’s vehicle lost control crashed into the cable barriers near the Children’s Hospital.
Police said he exited the vehicle and opened fire on the officers.
They returned fire and he was struck several times.
A loaded pistol was found near where he collapsed.
Police took Moore to the Couva District Health Facility where he was pronounced dead.
An autopsy is expected to be performed on Thursday at the Forensic Sciences Centre. (Barbados Nation) It was long in coming. This was the view of Queen’s Counsel Andrew Pilgrim after the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), with Sir Dennis Byron in his last sitting as president, struck down the mandatory death penalty for murder in Barbados on Wednesday.
The island’s highest appellate court determined that “the mandatory death penalty breached the right to protection of the law [under the Constitution] . . . as it deprived a court of the opportunity to exercise the quintessential judicial function of tailoring the punishment to fit the crime”, and they be returned to the Supreme Court for sentencing.
This followed the consolidation of two unrelated death penalty cases from Barbados. Jabari Sensimania Nervais v The Queen and Dwayne Omar Severin v The Queen, were joined because both appeals challenged the murder convictions and constitutionality of the mandatory death sentence.
Severin, of Crane, St Philip, was found guilty of killing Virgil Barton, on November 30, 2009, near his home in Lucas Street in the same parish.
Nervais, of 3rd Avenue, Sisnett Road, Bannister Land, St Michael, was convicted of murdering Jason Ricardo Burton on November 17, 2006. Burton lived at Perseverance Drive, Jackson, St Michael.
Last May, then president of the Court of Appeal, Justice of Appeal Sandra Mason (now Governor General Dame Sandra Mason), dismissed the appeals of both men. She said Parliament would have to make the necessary changes to Section 2 of the Offences Against The Person Act, if the death penalty were to be placed at the discretion of sentencing judges.