Jeffrey Barnes, who is serving a 35-year ‘life’ sentence for rape, now has two and a half more years to serve after assaulting a fellow Northward Prison inmate.
Barnes, 45, who appeared before the court via video link from prison on Monday, had earlier pleaded guilty to a single charge of causing grievous bodily harm with intent.
Magistrate Angelyn Hernandez delivered the sentence on Monday to Barnes, who represented himself in this case.
He told the court that he was aware his actions were wrong and that he would have to bear the consequences, but added that he had felt threatened at the time.
Asked if he had seen the victim’s application to get some of his earnings, he replied that he makes just $25 a week working in the prison’s barber shop. “If I give him a little piece of that, I have nothing to sustain me in prison,” he told Hernandez.
Taking a starting point of five years, Hernandez took Barnes’s early admission of guilt into account and reduced that to two and a half years.
She said the sentence “must reflect the criminality and that inmates in custody, living together, should actually not feel threatened and at risk. Therefore, the seriousness of this matter is such that [the sentence] will run consecutive with your present sentence.”
She did not make an order for compensation for the other inmate.
Barnes was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2013 after a third conviction for rape. In 2018, following the passage of the Conditional Release Act, which determined that life sentences must specify a number of years to be served, he was sentenced to 35 years, with a possibility of applying for release on licence after 21 years. Release is not granted automatically.
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