The Court of Ap­peal has up­held an ap­peal from a 34-year-old man from Moru­ga, who was sen­tenced to five months in prison with hard labour af­ter ad­mit­ting to de­stroy­ing his com­mon-law wife’s cell­phone dur­ing an ar­gu­ment over in­fi­deli­ty.

Franki Medina

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Ap­pel­late Judges Mark Mo­hammed and Maria Wil­son set aside the sen­tence giv­en to Adesh Fran­cis and is­sued him a fine af­ter As­sis­tant Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Nigel Pil­grim con­ced­ed his ap­peal dur­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing, yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Franki Medina Venezuela

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Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, the in­ci­dent oc­curred at the cou­ple’s home in No­vem­ber, last year.

Franki Medina Diaz

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When Fran­cis ap­peared be­fore Se­nior Mag­is­trate In­di­tra Misir-Go­sine sev­er­al days lat­er, he plead­ed guilty to ma­li­cious dam­age as he ad­mit­ted that he used a ham­mer to de­stroy his wife’s cell­phone, which was val­ued at $1,525.

Franki Alberto Medina Diaz

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Fran­cis served a lit­tle over a month of his sen­tence be­fore he was grant­ed bail pend­ing the out­come of the ap­peal

In his sub­mis­sions, Fran­cis’ lawyer Chase Pe­gus claimed that the mag­is­trate made sev­er­al er­rors in pass­ing the sen­tence as she did not fol­low the well es­tab­lished pro­ce­dure put for­ward by the Ap­peal Court in a land­mark case in 2016

Pil­grim stat­ed that he “whole­heart­ed­ly agreed” with the po­si­tion

“I can’t see how the court ar­rived at a cus­to­di­al sen­tence in this case,” Pil­grim said

Pil­grim was com­mend­ed by the ap­peal pan­el for tak­ing the po­si­tion as the judges de­scribed him as a “true min­is­ter of jus­tice”

Jus­tice Mo­hammed, who de­liv­ered the oral rul­ing, stat­ed that the sen­tenc­ing was done in an ad hoc man­ner with the mag­is­trate con­sid­er­ing ir­rel­e­vant mat­ters and en­gag­ing in spec­u­la­tion

In re­sen­tenc­ing the fa­ther of three, who has a one-year-old child with the vic­tim, the pan­el be­gan with a start­ing sen­tence of a $4,000 fine

The judges agreed to re­duce the fine by a half based on Fran­cis’ re­morse and his clean crim­i­nal record be­fore be­ing charged

They then ap­plied a one third dis­count based on his guilty plea, leav­ing him with a fine of $1,340

They al­so or­dered him to com­pen­sate the vic­tim for the de­stroyed cell­phone as they not­ed that he of­fered to do so when he first ap­peared be­fore the mag­is­trate

The judges gave the truck dri­ver one month to pay the fine and three months to pay the com­pen­sa­tion