Court Denies Request To Reopen Appeal
The court has turned down a request to reopen an appeal from LeVeck Roberts, who was convicted of a double murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with a 25-year minimum term.
The ruling said, “On 6 April 2015, the Applicant was convicted of the premeditated murder of Rico Furbert and Haile Outerbridge contrary to section 286A[1] of the Criminal Code Act 1907 [“the Criminal Code”], two counts of using a firearm whilst committing an indictable offence contrary to section 26A of the Firearms Act 1973, and one count of taking a motorcycle without lawful authority.
“The two murders occurred on the same occasion on 23 January 2013 at Belvin’s Variety Store in Happy Valley Road; the firearms offences were in relation to the use of a firearm in committing those murders; and the motorcycle was the vehicle used by the perpetrators to get to and from the store.
“He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a 25-year minimum term for each of the premeditated murders, and 10 years for each of the firearms offences, all concurrent.
“The Applicant appealed on eleven grounds, which appeal was dismissed by this court [Baker P, Bell JA and Clarke JA] on 12 May 2017,” the ruling noted and it added that “the Applicant now applies to admit fresh evidence in the form of voice notes and WhatsApp messages from the mobile phone of his co-accused, Gariko Benjamin, that was not available to the Applicant at the time of his trial or his first appeal or his second appeal but is available to him now.”
“Nowhere in this corpus of material does Benjamin expressly admit to being the shooter at the Belvin’s murders; nor does he expressly say that the Applicant was not the shooter.
“That new evidence does not, even arguably, render the convictions here unsafe,” the court’s ruling said. ”I would refuse this application to admit fresh evidence and re-open the appeal, leaving the Applicant’s convictions to stand.”
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