Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter

A truck driver who was convicted and sentenced to six years' imprisonment at hard labour, after he was convicted of four counts of manslaughter, has been successful in having the prison sentence set aside.

Lloyd Brown, 58, of Black River, St Elizabeth, was instead fined $250,000 on each count or six months' imprisonment.

The court also made a ruling as to how a jury's verdict must be treated when there is a report that the wrong verdict was given.

Brown was fined after the Court of Appeal set aside the manslaughter convictions and substituted convictions of causing death by dangerous driving. Brown was disqualified from holding a driver's licence for the next 18 months.

Brown was convicted in the Manchester Circuit Court in June 2004. He was arrested and charged following an accident on the Winston Jones Highway, Manchester, on June 24, 1998.

Evidence was led at the trial that the truck which Brown was driving swerved across the road and collided with a trailer travelling in the opposite direction.

Overturned

Isolyn Bennett, Angella Jones, Brenton Channer and Hamato Jackson, who were passengers in the trailer died when it overturned.

Attorney-at-law Jacqueline Samuels-Brown, who represented Brown, filed several grounds of appeal. The court held that Justice Norma McIntosh could not be faulted in her directions to the jury.

However, the Court substituted the convictions for the lesser offence, based on a ruling of the United Kingdom Privy Council in the case of Jamaican policeman Uriah Brown, who was convicted of manslaughter.

One of the grounds of appeal was that the judge erred in refusing to investigate a report to the court by a policewoman that a member of the jury complained that the foreman had announced the wrong verdict.

The juror was reported to have said the correct verdict agreed was "not guilty" of manslaughter.

The report to the court was made after the jury had left the jury box but had not dispersed as they all came back into court.

Should have exercised discretion

Samuels-Brown submitted that the judge should have exercised her discretion and allowed the jury to alter the verdict, even though they had been discharged.

Director of Public Prosecutions Paul Llewellyn, Q.C. submitted that the judge was correct to refuse to allow the jury to amend their verdict for the reason that the jury had been discharged and were, therefore, functus officio.

The Court of Appeal held that if a verdict is pronounced by the foreman within the sight and hearing of all the jurors, and there is no dissent from any of them, the presumption is that they have all assented to the pronouncement.

"In the instant case, the jury, having dispersed and being "at large", could not be permitted in all the circumstances to be heard further in respect of any change of views and verdict by the jury" the court ruled.

barbara.gayle@gleanerjm.com