A man who punched and kicked a shopkeeper while robbing her at knife-point has had his prison sentence of 12 years and 10 months upheld by the appeals court.
Richard Edward Nash was convicted in February 2022 for the 2020 robbery of the Tortuga Liquor Store in Governors Square.
When asking for the reduction on his jail term, Nash, through his attorney Oliver Grimwood, stated that the sentence was “too harsh and excessive“, and that the mastermind behind the crime was given a lesser sentence.
The “mastermind” – Kasnique Patrice Austin-Cupid – was convicted alongside Nash and jailed for a decade.
At the time of the robbery, Nash was on a suspended sentence for an unrelated offence. During his sentencing, Justice Marva McDonald-Bishop activated the suspended sentence and used the offence’s timing as a further aggravating factor, increasing Nash’s overall sentence.
When arguing for a reduction in his sentence, Grimwood referred to this action by McDonald-Bishop, which the Court of Appeal judges accepted as “erroneous”.
In a judgment posted to the court’s website on Friday, Justice Sir Jack Beatson stated that the court had “concluded that the total period of imprisonment, although arrived at in a way which was erroneous, is not arguably manifestly excessive”.
“It might be said that, given the ferocity of the attack on [the victim], the judge was merciful in concluding that, before mitigation, the starting point for the sentence of this applicant was 12 years and six months,” noted Beatson who later dismissed the appeal.
In November last year, Cupid also unsuccessfully sought to reduce her 10-year sentence.
A second man, who assisted Nash during the robbery, was never identified.
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