Stating that his client had been on remand for 8 and 1/2 years awaiting trial on a charge of murder which should not have been instituted in the first place, attorney Maxwell Mc Kay yesterday afternoon succeeded in requesting a sentence of time-served instead.
Lawrence Leroy Semple had been originally indicted for the murder of Jose Lamon Valenzuela to which he pleaded not guilty. He, however, pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter, admitting that between March 10th and 11th, 2012, he unlawfully killed Valenzuela.
On behalf of his client, Mc Kay told Justice Navindra Singh that given the circumstances of the case, it was unlikely that a conviction for murder could be secured.
On this point the lawyer said that there was no eyewitness and any conviction could only possibly be for manslaughter.
He said that while Valenzuela had last been seen with Semple, he was alive and it was not clear when or even how he died.
The attorney said that his client was a model prisoner, had no antecedents, did not waste the court’s time and was remorseful for the man’s death— all of which he asked the judge to consider in arriving at a decision.
In all the circumstances, Mc Kay begged the judge to grant time-served.
In his address to the court, an apologetic Semple said that he and Valenzuela were engaged in a fight in which Valenzuela was the aggressor and he merely retaliated.
He told the court that he only learnt sometime after the fight, that Valenzuela had died and said that he could not believe it when the police arrested him and informed him of the man’s passing following the altercation.
“I didn’t think he woulda dead,” Semple said.
Presenting the facts of the case, Prosecutor Tyra Bakker said that the two had “an incident,” during which Semple inflicted injuries to Valenzuela from which he died.
She asked the court to consider the nature and gravity of the offence and to impose a sentence to so reflect.
Justice Singh in his address said that the years Semple would have spent on remand awaiting trial was a long time to be on remand and was equal to a full sentence for manslaughter, given the particular circumstances of the case, but noted that it would not be the same for every case.
The judge surmised that he understood what had transpired between the two and that it was quite unfortunate, while agreeing with Mc Kay that given the circumstances of the case, murder did seem too harsh a charge to have instituted.
Justice Singh said he also considered Semple’s early plea which he said was the first step in accepting responsibility for his actions and a positive move in the direction of effecting change.
In all the circumstances, the judge informed Semple that he would be released from prison, providing that he had no other issues with the law.
Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, Semple attended his hearing virtually from the Lusignan Prison.
