Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter
A DEATH row inmate who last year successfully challenged the mandatory death sentence on the grounds that it was unconstitutional was yesterday sentenced to life imprisonment for double murder.
Lambert Watson, a 44-year-old farmer, was convicted in the Hanover Circuit Court five years ago for the 1997 murder of his common-law wife Eugenie Samuels and their nine-month-old daughter Georgina Watson.
Mr. Watson was sentenced to hang. He chopped them to death because Samuels was insisting that Mr. Watson should maintain the child.
After he lost this appeal in the Court of Appeal, his lawyers took the case to the United Kingdom Privy Council which ruled that judges should have the discretion to determine sentences in murder cases.
Chief Justice Lensley Wolfe, after hearing legal arguments from defence lawyer Nancy Anderson and Senior Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions, Paula Llewellyn, sentenced Watson to life imprisonment on each count and recommended that he should serve 20 years on each count before he was eligible for parole. The sentences are to run concurrently.
Ms. Anderson said her client had embraced Christianity while in prison, but the Chief Justice said pre-conditions of Christianity include repenting and seeking forgiveness. He said the social enquiry report indicated that Watson had not admitted to the crimes, despite the fact all the evidence suggested he was responsible for committing them.
The Chief Justice told Watson that had it not been for the landmark Privy Council ruling in the Pratt and Morgan case, (which ruled that persons on death row for more than five years should have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment), he would have imposed the death sentence on him.
