A man who killed his aggressor after he was attacked in a nightclub off West Bay Road has had his sentence reduced from 10 years to eight in a Court of Appeal ruling.
Courtney Mason Bryan said he lost his self-control when Recordo Lionel Pars, 27, and his brother followed him into the carpark outside Lillie’s nightclub early on 29 Aug. 2020.
When the men approached him, he stabbed Pars twice with a knife he claimed to have found on the ground in the club – but during his initial hearing said he “did not mean to kill”.
“I felt trapped with nowhere to go and feared for my life,” he said in his plea. “I used the knife on one of them and I accept that in doing so I intended to cause really serious harm.”
Bryan, a George Town resident, pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of provocation before Acting Justice Roger Chapple in Grand Court on 22 Jan. 2021.
On handing down his sentence on 17 Dec. 2021, Chapple agreed there was provocation but questioned the extent.
“You were entitled to use reasonable force to defend yourself,” he told Bryan. “But what you did could not possibly amount to reasonable force or any reason at all to take a life.”
He sentenced Bryan to 10 years in prison.
‘No intention to kill’
The defendant appealed the judge’s decision, and on 11 May, Jonathon Hughes of Samson Law argued for a reduced sentence for Bryan in the Court of Appeal.
Following consideration of the facts, appeals court president Sir John Goldring gave his judgment to the court. The transcript was published on 28 June.
Goldring said he and appeals court judges Sir Richard Field and Sir Michael Birt agreed that Chapple could have imposed a sentence “somewhat less” than the notional 15 years.
“The provocation was substantial. The appellant’s response by way of his conduct, as Mr Hughes put it, was not extreme,” he said in his judgment.
“The attack lasted minutes. The response was much shorter and, by definition, in the heat of the moment. There was no intention to kill.”
Goldring said reflecting on all these features, it seems that a notional sentence after trial of 12 years would have been sufficient to reflect Bryan’s criminality.
“That translates into a sentence of eight years following the early plea of guilty,” he explained.
The sentence recognises the extent of provocation “and that in the heat of the moment the appellant, having picked up the knife, made use of it not intending in doing so to kill”.
Bryan had previously been sentenced to four years in prison for robbery and possession of an imitation firearm.
Related Videos
