Haylock v R

• Jurisdiction: Belize
• Court: Court of Appeal (Belize)
• Judge: Hogan, J.A.,Inniss, J.A.,Georges, J.A.
• Judgment Date: 01 January 1977
• Neutral Citation: BZ 1977 CA 1
• Docket Number: Criminal Appeal No. 1 of 1977
• Date: 01 January 1977

Court of Appeal

Hogan, J.A.; Inniss, J.A.; Georges, J.A.

Criminal Appeal No. 1 of 1977

Haylock

and

R.

Criminal law - Appeal against sentence of 15 years for attempted murder — Previous violent acts — In all circumstances sentence of 12 years considered appropriate

1 The applicant in this case seeks leave to appeal from a sentence of 15 years imprisonment imposed on him after conviction by a jury of attempted murder.

2 The facts as disclosed in the summation were substantially undisputed. The applicant walked into the office of Dr. Humberto Del Castillo Van Heinkel at the Belize City Hospital and attacked him with a knife inflicting two wounds which could be described as dangerous to life. The doctor's alertness and courage in defending himself and the immediate availability of medical help prevented the attack from being fatal and fortunately there does not appear to have been any residual disability.

3 The reason for the attack was revenge. Six years before when the applicant, who is a druggist, worked with the doctor in the public service, the doctor had had occasion to report on his increasing unpunctuality and absenteeism. This led to the applicant's transfer to Belize City. The applicant's pattern of behaviour did not change and in due course he lost his job in the public service. He seems thereafter to have had great difficult in holding jobs in his professional field and for a while worked as a labourer.

4 There is a history of his having received psychiatric treatment and his defence at the trial was insanity. No medical evidence was called, however, and the jury proceeded to convict him.

5 Immediately after attacking the doctor the applicant was heard to say that he was now going to finish off Issacs, the officer under whom he had been working at the time of his losing his job in the public service.

6 Mr. Sosa, in his detailed and very thorough argument on behalf of the applicant, was content to argue the appeal on the basis that this court should not interfere unless the sentence can be shown to be wrong in principle or manifestly excessive (see Benjamin v. Reg. 7 W.I.R. 459) but maintained that it can be faulted on both these grounds.

7 Although the argument was presented from different angles the basic criticism was that the sentence was disproportionate to the offence and that the length of it must have been influenced by two factors neither of which should have been taken into account, the first being the general consideration of serving as a deterrent to others and the second being the need to protect the public for a long time from the applicant who seemed to be mentally unstable.

8 Authority for the first proposition is to be found in Curran (1973) 57 Cr. App. R. 945. In that case a sentence of 4 years imprisonment had been imposed for the offence of handling a Post Office saving account book. In reducing the sentence to two years the Court said:

“The only question is whether the sentence of three years was...