Jesse Ramdeo

For­mer High Court judge and Min­is­ter of Jus­tice, Her­bert Vol­ney, is mak­ing it clear that sen­tenc­ing is not re­venge in the wake of ob­jec­tions to the jail terms giv­en to Akeel Mitchell and Richard Cha­too.

Both men were found guilty of the 2006 mur­der of six-year-old Sean Luke.

On Wednes­day, Jus­tice Lisa Ram­sumair-Hinds sen­tenced both men to serve near­ly 30 years col­lec­tive­ly in prison.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Vol­ney re­it­er­at­ed that the death penal­ty was not ap­plic­a­ble and that the sen­tenc­ing was fair.

“The judge has those fac­tors, jus­tice and mer­cy, to bal­ance when sen­tenc­ing. So­ci­ety ex­pects there will be ret­ri­bu­tion for the acts and the law, first of all, lim­its the ex­tent of the ret­ri­bu­tion in that it says the per­sons can­not be sen­tenced to hang. One has to un­der­stand a judge has to be above emo­tions that run high in a case like this.”

Dur­ing the tri­al, Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds stressed that the death penal­ty could not be im­posed on Cha­too and Mitchell, who were mi­nors at the time of the crime. She ad­vised the pub­lic not to clam­our for the men to face the gal­lows.

“The judge, in de­ter­min­ing the sen­tence, in­vari­ably will take in­to ac­count, first of all, the grav­i­ty and cir­cum­stances of the killing, the ac­tu­al age of those com­plic­it in the killing, the lengths of time the per­sons were in cus­tody, whether there ap­pears to be any re­morse for the killing - all these fac­tors add to dis­counts that are giv­en,” Vol­ney added.

Vol­ney praised Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds for her han­dling of the case. He said she took every­thing in­to ac­count, fol­lowed the sen­tenc­ing guide­lines set in the judge’s hand­book and came up with what he de­scribed as the “right sen­tenc­ing.”