Judge tells convict army discipline should have reformed him

Justice Brassington Reynolds recently sentenced a man to nine years jail after he was convicted of killing a teacher during a robbery in 2003.

At a session of the Berbice Assizes in December, Rondel Harris, 29, a former Lance Corporal in the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) was initially indicted with murder, but confessed to the lesser count of manslaughter. He remained expressionless when the sentence was handed down while his 61-year-old mother, Jasmine Harris, quietly wept.

State Prosecutor Fabayo Azore told the court that on June 7, 2003, between 6.30 and 7 pm three men including Harris entered the Sain Supermarket at Williamsburg, Corentyne and robbed co-owner and cashier Bibi Zafena Ally of $400,000 along with a pair of gold bangles. They also accosted and robbed customers Indra Moonalall and her daughter of cash and jewellery totalling $55,000, before exiting the building where they attempted to force Saisenarine Ramnauth who had been parked and waiting for a friend, to transport them from the scene. The man refused and was shot at the back of his head.

Azore told the court that Harris had been picked out during an identification parade. He submitted too that Harris had been charged with murder several years earlier but that he had been freed due to insufficient evidence.

Meanwhile, Senior Probation and Welfare Officer Forbes Munroe who read the probation report to the court said Harris had sought positive avenues to elevate himself. He had joined the army and was quickly promoted; which might have indicated that he had an innate ability to convert negative experiences into positive ones.

Munroe told the court that Harris graduated from primary and community schools but was forced to abandon academic pursuits due to poverty and neglect. Instead he ran errands about his community for meagre wages and handouts. In 1996, based on encouragement from his father Patrick, Harris joined the GDF and completed courses in Signals, Parachuting and Jungle Warfare in French Guiana. He was promoted to the rank of Lance Corporal in 1997, but with the death of his father in 1998 he absconded in order to comfort his mother.

Munroe told the court that at the time of the offence Harris was employed as a labourer in the rice industry earning $1,500 per day and that he had been living with his mother in a two-bedroom wooden building that is currently unoccupied and in need of repairs. Regarding Harris’s response to the offence, Munroe said the man felt that it was the result of a bitter childhood where he was neglected and unloved by his father who had also violently abused his mother.

Harris said that the experiences caused him great hurt and frustration and this was manifested in delinquent behaviours even at a tender age.

As an adult, Harris abused psychotropic substances: marijuana and cocaine, and sometimes under their influence would visit his father’s grave and weep bitter tears.

Defence counsel Charrandas Persaud who held the brief for attorney-at-law James A Bond, in his mitigation plea told the court that Harris is not a perpetrator, but a victim of crime. “My client is a victim of the society…a society which is lacking in its morals. When the family fails, what programmes are instituted?” he asked. Further, he told the court that Patrick Harris, his client’s father and a former member of the GDF was a disciplinarian but he had neglected his child, and had failed to effectively guide him.

However, Justice Reynolds, after listening to the reading of the report and the plea in mitigation told Harris that he had had an opportunity to reorder his life after being exposed to the discipline of the army.

“I am satisfied that you had the opportunity if you wanted to make good of your life. You followed bad company, you expect that from children not those who were exposed to the armed services.

“It strikes me that when you unceremoniously left to support your mother… knowing the army as I do, you should have stayed and benefited from its welfare service,” Justice Reynolds, who had been an officer in the army, said. “You are lucky that the state has accepted the lesser count. I have considered the facts, your age, your period of incarceration, the reformed life of a Muslim and that you have not wasted the court’s time,” he added.