WATCH: ‘The judge was spot on’ – DPP pleased with Cocoa Piece killer sentence
Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Paula Llewellyn says she believes Justice Leighton Pusey made the right call in the sentencing of Cocoa Piece killer Rushane Barnett.
Barnett, the man who brutally murdered a Clarendon mother and her four children, was on Thursday ordered to serve five concurrent life sentences as he appeared in the Home Circuit Court.
He will have to serve 61 years and eight months in prison before being eligible for parole.
READ: Cocoa Piece mass murderer to serve five life sentences
In an interview with OBSERVER ONLINE, DPP Llewellyn said Judge Pusey considered all the mitigating factors in the highly publicised case and arrived at a decision that the judiciary and citizens of Jamaica can be pleased with.
“I believe the judge was spot on in how he dealt with it (the matter). He properly considered the advocating factors, the mitigating factors. I thought that was the correct starting point (62 years) according to law,” she said.
“He answered the call of history when he recognised, as we did, that there was no legal precedent for a case of this nature. And especially at a time in Jamaica where you have several multiple murders being committed at the same time, in the same space — it is a great call by the judiciary to show that in these sorts of matters, don’t do it because it will be dealt with strongly and effectively and with a lot of testicular fortitude. We are very pleased on this side,” she told OBSERVER ONLINE.
Also expressing satisfaction with the Court’s decision in the matter, Horace McKnight, the stepfather of Kimesha Wright, who was brutally slain along with her four children, says he will “work” with Barnett’s sentencing .
McKnight, who was standing outside the Home Circuit Court, had raised the 31-year-old mother since she was 13 years old.
“We will work with the 60 years. Him deserve at least 125 but we will work wid what dem say still,” he said.