Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter
THE TWO men who were sentenced in March last year to hang for the 1999 murder of 20-year-old Tahj Burrell and 22-year-old Jason Eldridge appeared in the Home Circuit Court yesterday. Chief Justice Lensley Wolfe ordered them to return on August 23 for re-sentencing.
The men, along with about 40 other murder convicts, are to be re-sentenced based on the amendment in February this year to the Offences Against the Person Act.
The United Kingdom Privy Council had ruled in October last year that the mandatory death sentence was discretionary. The ruling means that judges have the power to determine what sentence should be imposed.
Sentencing was put off because the guidelines as to the procedure to be followed for sentencing had not been completed.
Appearing before the court were Carl McHargh, 32, also called 'Omar', customs broker, of 17 Durham Avenue, Kingston 6 and Brian Rankine, 26, also called 'Marlon', of Cockburn Gardens, Kingston 11.
The men were sentenced to life imprisonment on the first count which charged them with Eldridge's murder.The judge recommended that they should each serve 30 years before they were eligible for parole.
On the second count charging them with Burrell's murder, they were sentenced to death.
JEALOUSY AS MOTIVE
The Crown led evidence at the trial which began on February 23, 2004, that jealousy was the motive for the murder based on a close 'social' relationship Burrell had with McHargh's former girlfriend.
The woman, who was engaged to McHargh, had broken off the relationship with him some time before July 1999.
Burrell, son of Captain Horace Burrell, former president of the Jamaica Football Federation and Eldridge, son of Noel Eldridge, retired assistant commissioner of police, were gunned down at the Northside Plaza, Liguanea, St. Andrew on the night of July 25, 1999. They had gone to buy pizza.
McHargh was said to have been the one who plotted to murder Burrell, and Eldridge was killed because he was in Burrell's company at the time and would have been a potential witness.
Since their convictions, the two men have been attacked and stabbed several times by prisoners. McHargh received 20 stab wounds in August last year and was hospitalised for a week. Rankine was stabbed three times in July. The two men are claiming that there is a plot to murder them in prison.
