Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter
A COURT of Appeal Judge on Monday issued a stern warning that persons found with illegal guns must expect stiff prison sentences because the country was swamped with too many illegal weapons.
Mr. Justice Seymour Panton made the comment when 37-year-old cabinet maker Garth Bolin, of 4 Pandora Crescent, Kingston, lost his appeal against his convictions for gun offences.
Bolin had also appealed on the ground that his sentence was manifestly excessive but the court ruled that the 18-year prison sentence which Mr. Justice Donald McIntosh had imposed for illegal possession of firearm was not manifestly excessive.
SENTENCE
Bolin was also sentenced to nine years imprisonment for illegal possession of six rounds of ammunition and three years imprisonment for assault. The sentences are to run concurrently so he will serve 18 years.
The Court of Appeal comprising Mr. Justice Panton, Mr. Justice Algernon Smith and Mrs.
Justice Zaila McCalla (acting) ordered that Bolin's sentence should commence on July 2, 2001.
Evidence was given at the trial in the Gun Court in July 2001 that on February 21, 1999, Henry Walters otherwise called "Blood Eye" complained to the police that Bolin had threatened to shoot him. Walters was
shot dead on March 5, 1999 but his statement to the police was tendered in evidence.
EVIDENCE
The police said they spoke with Bolin about the report they received and told him they were going to search the house. The police along with two soldiers searched a house at Windsor Heights, Central Village, St. Catherine and found a .357 Magnum on a table in a one-bedroom apartment. The gun was wrapped in a shirt and a woman was sitting in the room watching television. The police said Bolin admitted to the police that the gun and the shirt belonged to him and he was arrested and charged.
