THIRTY-three-year-old Kingston businessman Stephen Grant was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Home Circuit Court last Thursday – a week after being convicted for the 1999 murder of a schoolboy who was out celebrating his 17th birthday.

Grant, a licensed firearm holder, will spend 17 years behind bars before being eligible for parole, despite impassioned pleas from attorney Jacqueline Samuels-Brown that no parole timeline be stipulated.

Samuels-Brown sought to sway Justice Paulette Williams in her lengthy mitigation, noting that the convict was sorry for the murder and that an extended prison sentence would not “serve the public’s interest”. Under the parole act, persons sentenced to life imprisonment without the establishment of a timeline for parole can serve no more than seven years before becoming eligible for parole.

Character witness Adolph Brown, managing director of Steel Craft Ltd, testified that “the very thoughtful, very sober” Grant “had expressed regret” for the murder.

But Williams was not convinced, and lashed the seemingly nonchalant Grant.

“A 17-year-old young man is now dead; 11 gunshot wounds to the back. I wonder if you really got it – I’m wondering if you really understand what you did that night. You certainly expressed no remorse or regret for the killing as you stood and told the jurors that your conscience was clear because you know that you were defending yourself that night,” Williams scolded.

Williams, however, took into consideration that Grant, the father of a seven-year-old son, had already spent five years behind bars.

Grant was convicted on May 31 for the April 18, 1999 shooting death of Kymani Bailey of Dunoon Technical High School. Bailey was gunned down near the Asylum Nightclub. Grant turned himself in after the incident. He was arrested and charged two weeks later.

Grant, in an unsworn statement at the end of his three-week trial last Thursday, said he was forced to fire on Bailey who held him up with a gun.

This is his second conviction for the murder. He was found guilty on February 8, 2003, and sentenced to life with the possibility of being paroled after serving 20 years. The defence, however, appealed to the Privy Council, which returned the matter to the Court of Appeal, which ordered a retrial on January 16, 2006. The retrial started in October but was aborted in November due to jury tampering.