A man who robbed his local gas station of $2,200 with a plastic toy gun has failed in his attempt to appeal against his conviction.
Alvin Shaquille Ebanks was convicted in March last year of robbing the Hell Esso service station in December 2022. A jury unanimously found Ebanks guilty of one count of robbery and another count of possessing an imitation firearm. He received concurrent sentences of 12 years and four years.
Appearing before Court of Appeal justices on Thursday, Ebanks, who has 19 previous convictions, told the court that he was requesting the right to appeal on the grounds that his trial “never went right”, that his lawyer had ignored his instructions during the trial, that the police search could have been contaminated and that there was no evidence that put him at the scene of the crime.
During the trial, jurors were shown CCTV video of the robbery, which showed a man in a blue face mask wearing a black-and-white jacket and demanding money from the petrol station cashier with what seemed to be a weapon. A brief struggle ensued before the robber was seen to hit the employee with the gun, which then came to pieces.
The court had heard that Ebanks, who had been out on bail, committed the robbery while being fitted with an electronic monitoring tag, and that he had wrapped it in aluminium foil to disrupt the tag’s tracking system.
DNA match
Ebanks was identified by the cashier who recognised his voice, having known him since school. When police went to Ebanks’s home, they found that he wasn’t in, despite being under curfew. They also found partially burnt clothes a short distance from Ebanks’s home that matched what the robber had been wearing, as well as a partially burnt toy gun box. DNA testing later revealed a match between Ebanks and the recovered items.
Summing up for the Court of Appeal judges, Sir John Goldring said, had the only evidence been that his voice was recognised by the cashier, then there might have been grounds for appeal, but that there was “copious other evidence” that had been dealt with satisfactorily during the trial and that Ebanks’s case was “without merit”. He was refused leave to appeal against his conviction.
Ebanks went on to appeal against the length of his sentence, which he said was “extreme”, but after consideration, the judges described his case as “hopeless”, saying there were many aggravating factors, including his previous convictions. The appeal was refused.
Other case appeals
In a separate case, Patrick Derval Williams also appeared before the Court of Appeal on Thursday, claiming that his sentence was too extreme given that he pleaded guilty and had already been in the middle of a suspended sentence.
Williams was arrested in March 2022 during a police raid near Archie’s bar off Shedden Road in George Town. Williams had run away, was pursued by the police, and had fallen while jumping over a fence. He was discovered to have a loaded gun on him at the time and later pleaded guilty to firearm and ammunition possession, receiving sentences of eight years and one year to run concurrently.
The Court of Appeal judges noted that, while Williams had undoubtedly had a traumatic and dysfunctional childhood, the sentencing judge had taken all aspects of the case into account, including that it had been committed just a month after receiving a suspended sentence for another offence.
Summing up for the justices, Sir Richard Field said, “In our view, the sentence imposed was fair and appropriate and there is no arguable basis to contend that the sentence was excessive. The application must be, and is, dismissed.”
Two other separate cases were adjourned by the Court of Appeal on Thursday as the appellants sought legal aid – former Auxiliary Police Constable Courtney Alphonso Levy, who is serving four years in prison for trying to silence a key witness in a murder case, and Sharis Ford, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the possession of a loaded, unlicensed gun.
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