Paul and Lennox Bryson, the two brothers who were in 2019 convicted of murdering a Clarendon man whom they shot to death in a 2007 home invasion, lost their appeals against their sentence and convictions on Wednesday.

The Appeal Court, in ruling on the matter Wednesday morning, dismissed the appeals against the men’s convictions and refused the application by Paul Bryson for a reduced sentence. In affirming the sentences imposed, the court said the sentences of both appellants are to run as of April 12, 2019, the date they were imposed. The appeal court said its reasons for making the rulings will be produced at a later date.

The two men were found guilty of the murder of Richard Allen after a trial in the Home Circuit Court before Chief Justice Bryan Sykes and a jury. Paul was sentenced to 22 years and his brother 27 years, with eligibility for parole after 10 years.

Prosecutors told the court that on November 19, 2007, the Bryson brothers were among three men who invaded Allen’s home and shot him several times.

The third man, identified only as Popaul, was subsequently shot and killed in a gang feud.

The sole eyewitness in the brothers’ murder case was 16 at the time of the incident.

Attorneys for the two men, Anthony Williams and Melrose Reid, had filed several grounds of appeal, arguing among other things that the identification of one of the appellant by sole witness was a mere glance and as such as tenuous, rendering the judges’ decision a miscarriage of justice.

They also argued that Justice Sykes was biased in the conduct of the trial and also in his instructions to the jury and favoured the prosecution’s case amounting to a miscarriage of justice.

Wednesday morning Williams, in his submission, said the trauma of the moment would have interfered with the witnesses’ ability to make a proper identification.

An attorney for the Crown, in responding to the points raised by the defence in respect of the identification of the convicts, said the ground should fail as it had no merit. Furthermore, the Crown said “the learned trial judge dealt adequately with the omissions and inconsistencies identified and their impact on the overall case”. Responding to the defence’s argument that he judge was biased, the Crown said the “judge provided a very comprehensive analysis of the law”.

The Crown said the summation of the trial judge “has to be read in to its totality and not a piecemeal fashion”.