An Arnos Vale man with a long history of criminality took the Kingstown Magistrate Court on a merry-go-round over a charge that he stole a functioning surveillance camera from where it was mounted on a Kingstown business place.
Kerwin McDowald initially pleaded not guilty to the charge that on June 5, at Kingstown, he stole one white High-Tech Vision Camera valued at US$49.99, the property of Helen Neverson-Gary, of Richmond Hill.
However, as Senior Magistrate Tammika McKenzie was considering the date for McDowald’s trial and his bail conditions, he told the court that he was guilty and that he would not sit in prison waiting for a trial date as he was unlikely to get a surety.
The magistrate told McDowald that the court does not accept guilty pleas from people who are not guilty of the offence.
McDowald maintained the guilty plea, and the prosecutor, acting Sergeant of Police Shamrock Pierre, read the facts.
The facts are that Neverson-Gary owns a business place in Chinatown, Kingstown, which is fitted with interior and exterior surveillance cameras that are sound- and motion-activated.
Neverson-Gary was out of state on June 5, when she received a notification and informed her husband that the camera on the eastern side of the building was showing just a black screen.
Her husband checked the camera on June 10 and realised that it was missing.
Neverson-Gary checked the footage from when the camera was last in operation and saw someone in what appeared to be in blue shirt removing the camera from the building.
The matter was reported to the police and they recognised McDowald, who is well known to them, from the footage.
Shortly before removing the camera, McDowald had been recorded standing in front of the business place wearing the same clothes.
He then put something over his head before removing the camera.
When the footage was shown in court, the senior magistrate asked McDowald if he was the person in the footage.
McDowald said, “People look like people.”
At this point, Pierre asked that McDowald’s guilty plea be vacated and the matter proceed to trial.
The prosecutor, however, maintained that he would ask that McDowald provide a surety as part of his bail conditions.
McDowald told the court that he was the person on the footage removing the camera and asked for mercy.
He said that whenever he appears before the court, he is always sent to prison and has never received a suspended sentence.
The magistrate went through McDowald’s record and saw that he had been fined before.
She further noted that the last time he was before the court, he was jailed for two and a half months and ordered to pay compensation.
McDowald said that he had not paid that compensation.
He was ordered, therefore, to serve the nine-month sentence for not paying the compensation.
The court concluded that McDowald would be unable to pay compensation and jailed him for a further six months and three weeks for stealing the camera.