Artesia primarily covers court stories, but she also writes extensively about crime.
The country’s final appellate court on Tuesday directed the Court of Appeal to hold a resentencing hearing for a former death row inmate whose murder conviction was reduced to manslaughter.
Roger Watson has been in custody for 20 years.
He was convicted of the 2003 murder of 12-year-old Eddison Curtis after a trial in 2006.
The preteen was in the living room of his family’s wooden home in Fox Hill when a man, identified by witnesses as Watson, opened fire on the residence with an assault rifle.
Eddison, who was watching television, was shot in the head. He was still holding the TV’s remote.
Prosecutors sought the death penalty and following a sentencing hearing in 2007, he was sentenced to death.
Watson appealed both his conviction and sentence in 2009. The Court of Appeal found that the prosecution had failed to prove an intention to kill, a requirement for a murder conviction, and reduced the conviction to manslaughter.
The Court of Appeal sentenced Watson to 50 years’ imprisonment from the date of his conviction without hearing submissions on the appropriate penalty.
The Privy Council heard Watson’s appeal against his sentence on April 23.
The law lords ruled that to sentence Watson without hearing submissions was procedurally unfair.
Watson will appear before the Court of Appeal for a new sentencing hearing at a date to be fixed.
