Guyana Chronicle, 28 November 1998

Student robber serving 15 years spared whipping

SEYDEL Bourne, 26, now serving a 15-year jail term for robbery was spared the seven strokes he was to get when the Guyana Court of Appeal removed the whipping from his sentence.

Chancellor Cecil Kennard and Justices of Appeal Maurice Churaman and Lennox Perry ordered the removal because they found no proof that the prisoner had used violence to perpetrate the crime.

But they did not agree with Mr Nigel Hughes, for the appellant, that the imprisonment was severe. Instead the judges held it was adequate and refused a reduction.

The Appellate Court accepted, however, that the trial judge had failed to address the jury adequately on the identification testimony.

Consequently, the Justices of Appeal applied the proviso that the remaining evidence was so strong, a jury properly directed would have arrived at the same guilty verdict.

Bourne was one of two men who took away Bishops' High School student Anil Gangadin's bicycle after carrying him on it along several city streets.

Police said one of the robbers had brandished a gun during the September 4, 1991 incident.