The 17-year-old boy who was convicted of the 2018 rape, buggery and murder of a nine-year-old girl in Westmoreland, has been sentenced to life imprisonment relative to her killing.
The sentence was imposed in the Home Circuit Court in downtown Kingston on Friday, a week after the initial sentencing was delayed due to the absence of Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Paula Llewellyn.
In relation to the mandatory life sentence being imposed on the count of murder, the convicted teenager is to serve 23 years and nine months in prison before he becomes eligible for parole consideration.
This is three more years than the 20 years that Llewellyn had recommended that the convict serve in prison before being eligible for parole consideration.
High Court Judge, Justice Courtney Daye, said the teenager showed no remorse for his actions, and needed to get more years than was being suggested.
The judge also considered that the girl was young, innocent and vulnerable at the time of the incident.
The convicted teen was also sentenced to 18 years in prison for rape, and 10 years for buggery.
The three sentences are to run concurrently, meaning that the teen will serve a minimum of 23 years and nine months in prison.
During the reading of a social enquiry report in court on Friday, the teenager expressed disappointment that he was convicted, and maintained his innocence.
He told a probation officer that the child was killed by two men, who had also raped her.
The teenager claimed that one of the men in particular, squeezed the girl’s neck until her feet stopped moving after he raped her.
But like when those claims were made by the teen during his trial, Llewellyn again rejected his arguments by pointing to the overwhelming scientific evidence that linked him to committing the crime.
According to the evidence that was led at the trial, the girl accepted the teenager’s invitation to pick apples together as they walked home from school.
However, she was sexually assaulted and killed by the teen boy, who contended at the trial that two men raped and killed the girl.
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But the teenager admitted to having had sex with the girl after the two men had completed their ‘acts’.
Testimony from a leading DNA expert and forensic evidence proved that material found in the female minor’s anus matched that of the teenage boy.
A pathologist testified, too, that the child died from asphyxia due to manual strangulation, and there were lacerations to her vagina and anus.
Following the hearing of evidence over several days, a six-member jury convicted the teenager of murder, rape and buggery in the Westmoreland Circuit Court on July 1.
Llewellyn, in speaking to reporters after the verdict in July, said the conclusion of the case had negative consequences for both the families of the victim and the convict.
“It’s a tragic situation… (for) the family of the deceased, whose daughter really suffered a brutal end, and the family of the accused, whose son will have to take responsibility for what was a very, very awful moment of youthful exuberance,” she said at the time.
