Man sentenced to three months in jail for disrespecting the Chief Magistrate

A GUILTY VERDICT was returned on two charges of showing disrespect in speech to the Chief Magistrate Rechanne Browne-Matthias, and three months imprisonment meted out to the perpetrator.

The two charges, one for March 27, 2017, and the other listed as having taken place on January 29, 2018, were both examined in a full trial across the span of last year.

On December 18, Senior Magistrate Rickie Burnett decided that defendant Dennis Richardson could be convicted for showing disrespect in speech based on the evidence before him.

Therefore, it was found that Richardson had indeed uttered the words, “I don’t like that magistrate, I don’t get f**king justice wit she. She stinking p**ky mudda c**t. I want to ketch she to rest a hand grenade in she mouth,” and “Next time me go spit in she f**king face or take a f**king chair and pelt it at she.”

Before handing down this verdict, the senior magistrate stated that the charge was under the section of offences related to judicial proceedings, and that “I must confess that in my seven years as a magistrate, it is the first time a charge like this is coming before me.”

Chief Magistrate Rechanne Browne-Matthias

For the first charge, the magistrate stated that he saw no reason to disbelieve the evidence of the prosecution.

“I believe they (the prosecution witnesses) spoke the truth as to what transpired on that day. I believe because the defendant was upset with the Chief Magistrate, and his belief as to how the matter had been handled, he reacted by uttering the words on the information,” Burnett noted.

For the second charge, the magistrate concluded similarly, that the witnesses of the prosecution were witnesses of truth, and that the defendant said the words because he formed the view that the Chief Magistrate should not have been handling his matter.

Richardson is currently on a sentence of four years imprisonment on a separate charge, and it came out that his release date from Belle Isle Correctional Facility is in 2021.

There was some back and forth between the defendant and the prosecution as Richardson wished to establish that he had already spent time in jail for the offences as he wasn’t granted bail, but the prosecution made the point that the issue of bail did not arise because Richardson had already been denied bail on another serious charge.

The magistrate checked and found that no bail had seemingly been granted on the charges, but stated that time spent on remand could be checked easily and would be deducted from any sentence he gave.

He handed down a sentence of three months incarceration on each charge.