TWO MURDER convicts sentenced in the Home Circuit Court last month under the new amendment to the Offences Against the Person Act have filed appeals against their convictions and sentences.
They are Michael Asserobe, 30-year-old taxi driver of Denbigh, Clarendon, who was sentenced to hang for the murder of a 10-year-old girl, and Hopeton Barclay, 31-year-old labourer of Lawrence Tavern, St. Andrew, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering his relatives.
The legislation was amended this year following a United Kingdom-based Privy Council ruling last year that the mandatory death sentence for persons convicted of capital murder was unconstitutional. Judges can now hear mitigation pleas and decide the appropriate sentences to be imposed on murder convicts.
Asserobe was sentenced to hang for the murder of Tamara Osbourne.
SLASHED HER THROAT
Evidence was given at the trial that the girl was on her way to school, on June 24, 1999, when Asserobe offered her a lift and then sexually assaulted her and slashed her throat.
The body was found about 10 kilometres off the Bustamante Highway, Clarendon. The deceased's sister had a child for Asserobe. He gave a cautioned statement to the police in which he confessed that he had had sexual intercourse with the girl but claimed he lost consciousness after.
On August 6, 1997, Barclay used a shovel to inflict injuries to the heads of his aunt Cynthia Pounall and her daughter, 25-year-old Althea Dillon, and Pounall's common-law husband Eric Williamson, at their home in Lawrence Tavern.
Barclay had also beaten his grandmother but she survived the injuries.
