Inmate appeal fails over 3 months additional time

(CNS): Efforts by an inmate to have three months additional jail time, which was added to his existing ten year sentence, run concurrently rather than consecutively failed Friday. Ryan Elijah Ebanks was given the extra time by Magistrate Valdis Foldats as a result of an assault he committed on a fellow inmate, which had resulted in a wound requiring five stiches above the man’s eye. Staging his appeal without an attorney, Ebanks argued that to add the time onto his already long sentence was excessive. The judge disagreed and pointed to his 33 previous convictions, the serious injury he had caused to his fellow inmate and the need for discipline in the prison.

Ebanks was serving a fifteen year sentence for armed robbery at a West Bay grocery store, which was reduced by the Court of Appeal to ten. However, following the assault on another prisoner, in which Ebanks had pushed his victim so hard he smashed his head on the cell bars and cut his eye open, he was given a further three months.

Ebanks argued that he was a human being and it was a difficult time for him when he committed the assault, as he said he “was frustrated” and was "having a bad day" when he pushed his jail mate into the cell bars.

He said that although he had 33 previous convictions, they were mostly for drugs and not many were for violent crimes, having little to say about the obvious act of major violence with the armed robbery. He asked the judge to have some mercy on him as he suggested he could have received another punishment from the prison management rather than more time, given how long he already had to serve.

Justice Charles Quin, who heard the appeal against the summary court sentence, pointed out that it was not manifestly excessive and was, in fact, very fair and reasonable given the aggression of the assualt. He said that inmates had to be protected as well as guards or visitors to the prison.

Commending Ebanks for his efforts to do the appeal alone, the judge nevertheless was in agreement with the magistrate who handed down the sentence. The judge said that if it was not added on, it would send the wrong signal.

“It would undermine the deterrent effect,” Justice Quin said, and if the sentence was not consecutive, “it would give carte blanche for anyone to commit an assault while in jail.”

The judge made it clear that he considered the assault to be violent and aggressive, and despite what may have been his frustrations, “You went too far,” he told the prisoner, as he upheld the magistrate’s sentence.