Judge: Life in jail the starting point

With 39 killings in 2022 and a murder rate of 9.77 for every 100 000 people, outspoken High Court judge Justice Carlisle Greaves has declared that life imprisonment will be the starting point for everyone convicted of that crime, especially if it involved the use of a firearm.

He reiterated this position as he ordered Romell Akeem Cummins to serve a minimum of 36 years of a life sentence before he is considered for release from behind bars.

“We have a real problem exacerbated by the use of firearms,” the judge said as he quoted murder statistics from around the region and compared them to figures from Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong and China.

“Reports suggest that an average of over 80 per cent of murders are committed using a firearm. It is for this reason, given the breadth of these crimes, when murders are committed by the use of firearms, that the sentence is going to be different to that of other types of murders and other offences,” he explained. (HLE)

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