Man gets seven-year starting sentence for slaying brother

A High Court judge handed down a seven-year starting sentence on Rommell Johnaton Bishop for the death of his older brother, Robert St Pierre, saying it was clear from the submissions of the prosecutor and defence that he had suffered at the hands of the deceased.

But after making several deductions, Justice Randall Worrell informed Bishop that he had 454 days left to serve but suspended the sentence for three years.

Bishop, of Harlington Road, St Philip, pleaded not guilty to murdering St Pierre on May 4, 2011, but guilty to manslaughter.

Justice Worrell said during Wednesday’s sentencing hearing: “There was a stabbing, and there actually is no other information before the court except what you have put forward. You indicated that it was you who injured your brother in this most unfortunate case, and clearly, those injuries led to his death. I have to take into consideration as well that there must have been, in this case, technical and non-technical provocation and probably non-technical self-defence, but it is quite clear from the prosecution and the defence that you suffered at the hands of your brother. It is quite clear that what has been said may have placed you, as [Acting Director of Public Prosecutions Allison] Seale has said, probably at a new realm of battered brother syndrome.”

Mitigating in Bishop’s favour, was the fact that he was 17 years old at the time of the offence, had a clean criminal record, cooperated with police, and had endured violence at the hands of his brother, said the judge. Those factors led to one year being deducted from the seven-year starting point.

Justice Worrell then discounted one-third for the convicted man’s early guilty plea, 826 days for the time he spent on remand, and 180 days for the delay.

Noting that during their sentencing submissions, Acting Director of Public Prosecutions Alliston Seale SC and Andrew Pilgrim SC had urged the court not to incarcerate Bishop as there was an element of provocation in the matter, Justice Worrell agreed with the State’s position that the convicted man should be monitored by the court for some time, stating it would be appropriate that Bishop was held to some degree of responsibility through a suspended sentence.

“If you commit another offence punishable by imprisonment for a period exceeding six months, then you would be brought back to court and sentenced for this 454 days as well as whatever sentence pertains to any subsequent offence,” the judge told Bishop as he stood in the dock of the No. 2 Supreme Court.

The court had previously heard that the father of the two brothers left them at home and returned before midday. Upon entering the house, he saw blood in the area of the partition between the dining room and kitchen and found St Pierre’s body. He went to a neighbour and called the police.

Initially denying knowing anything about his sibling’s death, Bishop later confessed to the killing, saying: “I sorry I lie. I is who stab my brother. Robert does beat me all the time.”

In his written statement, the convicted man said he had been in the kitchen when his brother entered the room and began asking about money and chucked him. Bishop said his brother then began searching him while he was fighting him off.

The statement read in part: “He then start to beat me bout. I take a knife from the sink and went in the bedroom. He come in the bedroom behind me and then push me on the bed and start cuffing me. I was able to get ‘way and I was able to stab he with the knife I had. I stab he but he still come behind me and when I went in the kitchen, I stab he again and then he drop just as he was running towards the cupboard. I went in the yard wash de knife off, and bathe afterwards, make breakfast and left the kitchen leaving my brother.”