KEMAR Riley — one of the four men convicted in December 2019 for the 2011 murder and beheading of 18-year-old Joeith Lynch and her mother 40-year-old Charmaine Rattray in Lauriston, St Catherine — has filed an appeal against his conviction and life sentence.

Riley, who has denied any involvement in the killings, had been found guilty by a jury of seven and was sentenced by then Supreme Court judge Justice Vivene Harris to life imprisonment at hard labour, and ordered to serve a minimum 52 years before being eligible for parole.

Riley, who was 29 years old at the time he was convicted, has gone to the Appeal Court challenging the decision of the lower court.

The matter was on the Appeal Court’s hearing list for the Michaelmas Term and was scheduled for a hearing on Tuesday. However, when the matter was called up, attorney-at-law Obiko Gordon requested an adjournment to take further instructions from his client.

On Thursday, when the matter was again called up, it was indicated that a new attorney was to be assigned by the court to handle the appeal.

Gordon, when contacted by the Jamaica Observer, declined to go into details, only stating, “the matter is being reassigned to different counsel”.

He said Riley’s appeal has been taken off the court list but will be put back once a new attorney has been assigned.

During the trial the prosecution had contended that Riley was the one who fatally shot Lynch, a past student of The Queen’s School in St Andrew and an aspiring medical doctor.

The lynchpin of the Crown’s case against Riley was the testimony of its star witness who told the court that Riley, in a jail house confession, told him that he had been part of the group of men who invaded the women’s house.

According to the witness, Riley told him in 2011, while they were in custody, that he had ended up being the one to fire a shot into Lynch’s head because she bawled out the name of one of the individuals who was chopping her “too loud”.

But the former Waterford High School dropout, who is said to have been part of a group of eight or nine men who on the night of July 19, 2011 hacked to death, shot, then beheaded the women, told the court that on the morning after the killings he only “hear that people dead down the road”.

He also denied being part of the gang or having known, or confessed, to the star witness.

He further said he had “never fired a gun before”.

Riley was one of five of the suspects arrested and charged in relation to the murders.

According to the police investigators, the other suspected gangsters had been killed in other incidents.

Three of the arrested men — Adrian Campbell, Roshane Goldson, and Fabian Smith — pleaded guilty to non-capital murder at the start of the trial in November of 2019.

Riley and his cousin Sanja Ducally, however, pleaded not guilty to murder and went to trial. Ducally walked free after his lawyers made a successful no-case submission on his behalf. Riley was, however, found guilty by a jury.

In December 2019, Justice Harris, in handing down the sentences for the four, said her move to go beyond the maximum penalties prescribed by the sentencing guidelines was buffered by several factors, including the fact that the women had been slaughtered with less dignity than animals butchered in the island’s abattoirs.

“To say these women were butchered would be an unjust comment about butchers in Jamaica because even animals are treated more humanely than the two women who were savaged that night,” said Justice Harris as she noted that the ordeal the women suffered that night “did not end in their houses”, as their heads were carried elsewhere and “discarded like garbage”.

In handing down the sentences, which cumulatively amounted to 186 years, the judge listed some 10 aggravating factors that were applicable to all the defendants, including the fact that the murders were premeditated; were a reprisal; the number of weapons used, including the guns which were never seized; the number of men involved (eight or nine); the way in which the assailants gained access to the house; the fact that the women were in bed; the ages of the victims (40 and 18 years); the extreme violence perpetrated against the women; the beheadings; the disposal of their heads; and the impact of the crime on Lauriston and the wider community.

“It is my view that the murders were meant to create terror,” and “send a chilling message of informer fi dead”, to insulate criminals to continue the culture of silence, allowing them to continue their reign of terror,” she outlined before going on to sentence Campbell to life imprisonment at hard labour with the provision that he serve a minimum 44 years before being eligible for parole.

Goldson, the cousin of Lynch, was also slapped with a life sentence at hard labour and will be eligible for parole after a minimum of 46 years.

Smith was also given life at hard labour and ordered to serve a minimum 44 years before being eligible for parole, while Riley was sentenced to life at hard labour and a minimum 52 years before being eligible for parole.

According to the prosecution, Rattray and her daughter were attacked by the gunmen who invaded their home, acting on what the court has since been told were orders from “the general” of the Klansman Gang for them to be killed because they were ‘informers’ and had been dispensing information about the killing and decapitation of their neighbour, 18-year-old Scott Thomas, reportedly by his cronies from the feared gang, just some hours before they were killed.

Rattray’s missing head was discovered on July 21 floating in the Rio Cobre, some 300 feet away from where she had spent her final hours, while her daughter’s decomposing head was found days afterwards in a gully just 50 feet away from the house in which they had lived.