Lawyer cites Barabbas as he begs for mercy for murderer

As a murderer was being sentenced in Kingstown last week, his lawyer noted the Easter season and that Barabbas, also a killer, was freed about 2,000 years ago.

“Many, many years ago, there was a man named Barabbas and some leniency was given to Barabbas,” Stephen Williams said at High Court No. 1, where his client, Etson Timm was being sentenced.

“It is the season of Easter. I am in no point equating the defendant to Barabbas, but I am just saying it is the season where Barabbas was freed.”

According to Christianity, Barabbas, a murderer was freed, even as Jesus Christ, an innocent man, was crucified.

Timm was being sentenced for the May 9, 2019 murder of Darren “Precious” Davy, 18, of Arnos Vale — a crime he orchestrated.

He threatened to murder his friend, Jeremy Alexander, if he did not shoot and kill Davy, a person unknown to Alexander.

Williams asked the court to consider the sentence imposed on Alexander, who pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced on April 1 to 13 years in prison.

Alexander pleaded guilty on April 11.

Williams noted that Timm, now 26, was 23 at the time of his crime.

He said his client attended the Richland Park primary school and upon passing the Common Entrance Examination, went to Mountain View Adventist Academy.

He dropped out in form 4, due to a lack of money and support from his father, with whom he lived.

Timm did not grow up with his mother, who had migrated to the United States to seek a better life, so he lacked the proper parental supervision that a mother would instill in her child, Williams told the court.

After dropping out of school and because of his financial circumstances, Timm went to work in block making.

He later worked at a garage in Diamond, where he did auto mechanic work for about three years.

Williams said that Timm’s mother returned to St. Vincent and the Grenadines when he was a grown man, by which time he had lacked maternal supervision.

While living in Richland Park, Timm attended church from 2012 but stopped in 2015.

He left Richland Park to live with his girlfriend in Diamond and has a 5-year-old child whom he maintained when he was out of prison, providing the proper supervision that a father should give to his child, Williams said.

Defendant grew up extremely poor and pleaded guilty, Williams said.  

The lawyer urged the court that in considering the circumstances of the case, it takes into account Timm’s personal circumstances as highlighted in the Caribbean Court of Justice case of Renaldo Anderson and the Queen, a 2016 case.

In that judgement, Justice Adrian Saunders wrote that if after considering all the aggravating and mitigating circumstances of the offence as distinct from those of the offender a judge is initially disposed to imposing a life sentence, that  discretion can be softened, in appropriate cases, upon the considering of mitigating circumstances that relate to the defendant.

“That would be because of matters such as the defendant’s early guilty plea, his age, his level of remorse or socio- or economic circumstances cause the judge to moderate his or her original position in favour of a lesser sentence measured in terms of years,” Justice Saunders wrote.

Williams said:

“And so, the court must take into consideration that when this offence was committed, the accused was 23 years old, a relatively young person, considering the human life expectancy is now longer — hence people have to work longer, more years to get their pension and so forth and so forth.”

He said that Timm had one conviction from 2011, which is spent.

The lawyer said that based on Timm’s relatively young age and that he had skills as a mechanic and given that Superintendent of Prisons Timothy Hazelwood had mentioned to the court that day programmes that are available to prisoners, Timm is a good candidate for rehabilitation.

Williams said Timm’s guilty plea, in itself, shows that there is remorse.

“… and albeit he had not pleaded guilty at the first opportunity, but he pleaded guilty nevertheless. The accused didn’t waste the court’s time with the possibility of going through a trial and should be given some credit for a guilty plea,” Williams told the court.

He said that Timm did not fire the fatal bullet that caused Davy’s death, “albeit based on the evidence before this court, that he may have spurred on the other accused”.

Williams argued that there was “not a sophisticated level of planning” of the killing. 

“From the evidence, the defendant and the co-accused went to a shop, saw the deceased there and it was at that point that the incident occurred.”

He asked the court to consider that Timm grew up in poverty.

“And that is important because had this not been the case, he probably would have had his own mechanic shop, attended the technical college and enrolled in the programme to do auto mechanics.

“So you see, when children are at a young age, if they get pushed in the proper direction, they go on the straight and narrow part. With the lack of parental supervision, one can see how easy it is for a young man at the age of 23 to stray off the straight and narrow path due to the lack of proper parental supervision,” Williams said.

Timm was sentenced to 31 years in prison for his crime.