Court of Appeal judges have dismissed an application by Odain Lloyd Ebanks to appeal his sentence and conviction for his involvement in a 2018 armed robbery of the Czech Inn restaurant in Bodden Town and a shootout with police during the getaway.
Ebanks, who was convicted in October 2018, is serving a 14-year prison sentence for the robbery and shooting.
Two masked men, one armed with a gun, held up the restaurant after it closed on the night of 3 March 2018. One of the men fired a shot into a wall, and the other sprayed the owner in the face with pepper spray during the hold-up. Police later chased the stolen getaway vehicle and exchanged gunfire with the robbers.
When sentencing Ebanks in March 2019, Grand Court Justice Marlene Carter jailed him for 10 years for the robbery and possession of a gun, as well as three years for possessing pepper spray. Those sentences ran concurrently. He was also given a consecutive sentence of four years in prison for using a gun to shoot at police.
Dismissing Ebanks’ application to challenge his sentence and conviction long after the deadline for notice of appeal had passed, Court of Appeal President Sir John Goldring said the application was “wholly without merit”.
He said Ebanks could have faced more charges and received a longer sentence than 14 years, considering the seriousness of the offences, which included firing on police officers.
After the Court of Appeal judges delivered their ruling to not allow Ebanks leave to appeal out of time, Goldring noted that it was “strange” that the Penal Code carries a sentence of five years for unlawfully using a gun, but 10 years for possessing an illegal firearm.
He also queried why, based on the utter lack of merits in the appeal, Ebanks had been granted legal aid to pursue the matter. He suggested that the Department of Legal Aid investigate how this happened, after Ebanks’ legal counsel, Keith Myers, said he had told the legal aid authority that application for leave to appeal out of time would be unsuccessful.
Related Videos
