Dennis Wharton, who admitted to fatally chopping a woman with whom he claimed to have had a relationship, will serve the next 28 years in jail.
Justice Roxane George handed down the sentence to Wharton at the High Court yesterday, starting at 40 years but deducting six years for his guilty plea and six years for the time he had already served in prison.
Wharton, who had been charged with the murder of June Osborne,pleaded guilty to the lesser offence of manslaughter. Osborne was killed on November 2006, at her East La Penitence Squatting Area home.
In handing down her sentence, Justice George said that she saw absolutely no mitigating circumstances in the case. She also said that it was a grave case of manslaughter and one of aggravating circumstances, while noting that Osborne had met a gruesome death.
The judge also pointed out that the probation report, which was presented on behalf of the accused, did not speak favourably of him.
Wharton declined to speak when asked by Justice George.
The probation report said Wharton claimed that he and Osborne had a relationship and he was informed by his friends that she was being unfaithful to him.
It also stated that Wharton said he went to her house to confront her about the allegation but she became angry and picked up a cutlass at him. He in turn then took the cutlass and attacked her. The report quoted Wharton as saying that while Osborne was on the floor, she begged him to spare her life but he was so consumed with anger he did not pay her any heed.
But state prosecutor Rhondel Weever, in association with Natasha Backer, noted that Wharton told the police a different story. Weever told the court that in the statement Wharton gave to the police, he said he used to do odd jobs for the woman and on the day of the murder, he and another man went to her home. The other man, he said, had a cutlass and when they arrived at the woman’s home they called her out of the house. He said that Osborne exited the house with a cutlass in her hand and asked them what they were doing there and his partner told her she would see what they were doing.
He said Osborne then asked them to leave her yard but they refused and she chopped his accomplice to his face. The accomplice then reportedly responded by chopping the woman, causing her to fall to the ground. Wharton also told the police that after this, he collected the cutlass from his friend and chopped the woman. They then dragged her to the back of the yard and left.
Osborne’s body was later found by her daughter, who went to check on her, hidden under a zinc sheet at the back of her yard. Her house had been ransacked.
Defence attorney Sonia Parag, in her mitigating plea, argued that it was a crime of passion because of the story her client told her about the affair, which was supplemented by the probation report. She also asked the court to exercise leniency in handing down a sentence.
As a result of the conflicting accounts, Justice George asked the probation officer whether her investigation revealed that the accused and Osborne indeed had a relationship
In answer, the probation officer told the court that some persons in the area were uncertain while others said that Wharton was a junkie and Osborne was a church person, so a connection did not seem to exist.
The judge then asked Osborne’s sister and cousins, who were in court, whether they had known about a relationship between her and the accused. They both replied no.
