A SUPREME Court Judge has recommended that a man serve 40 years' imprisonment for murdering a Crown witness, because such a murder was considered an attack on the system of justice and the rule of law.
David Ebanks, 30, mason of Majesty Gardens, Kingston 11 was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Justice Patrick Brooks, in passing sentence in the Home Circuit Court on Tuesday recommended that Ebanks should serve 40 years before becoming eligible for parole.
NO REMORSE
The judge said Ebanks showed no remorse for the crime he committed. He stressed that "witnesses must feel free to tell what they know to the police and to give evidence in court concerning those things".
The judge said that, if it were otherwise, then the nation's courts would become redundant, persons would seek to impose their own idea of justice and the rule of law would become extinct.
"Those persons who are inclined to intimidate or threaten witnesses are, therefore, to be alerted that that behaviour is abhorred by our legislature and our society," the judge warned. He said it was for that reason that the penalty of death was described as the most severe penalty that offence of killing a witness in a court case would attract. The judge said the killing of a person to prevent that person from approaching the seat of justice was an extremely repulsive act.
Ebanks was convicted in the Home Circuit Court in March 2000 of the murder of Joel Russell and sentenced to hang.
