NASSAU, BAHAMAS — The Court of Appeal has refused to give an extension of time for convicted murderer Kofhe Goodman to appeal his 2018 conviction and 55-year prison sentence on the basis that the proposed appeal “has no prospects of success”.
The matter was heard by Court of Appeal Justices Sir Michael Barnett, Jon Isaacs, and Roy Jones.
Attorney Stanley Rolle represented Goodman.
Director of Public Prosecution Garvin Gaskin and Cordell Frazier represented the Crown.
In August 2013, Goodman was convicted of the 2011 murder of 11-year-old Marco Archer.
He appealed his conviction.
It was set aside and a retrial was ordered on the basis that the conduct of his counsel at the original trial and due to pretrial publicity prior to the trial, which affected the fairness of the trial
At the retrial, Goodman was again convicted of the murder and was sentenced to 55 years imprisonment.
While Attorney Wayne Munroe, QC, represented Goodman on appeal, he did not represent him at his original trial.
He was sentenced on May 7, 2018.
Six days later, Goodman attempted to appeal his conviction, however, the notice of appeal was not received by the court until November 26, 2018.
Goodman filed an application for an extension of time and sought to appeal the conviction and sentence on the basis that the conduct of the prosecution and defense counsel gave rise to a flaw in the trial process; the conduct of the trial judge failed to ensure fairness of the trial; and that evidence was wrongly admitted and/or rejected.
But the appellate court refused the extension of time and affirmed the conviction and sentence.
“The proposed appeal has no prospects of success,” the court ruled.
“There is simply no credible basis for accepting that the intended appellant’s counsel did not take adequate or proper instruction or gave him bad advice.
In his ruling, Sir Michael said: “The decision not to call any witnesses for the defence was made before the trial commenced and this was indicated to the court at the beginning of the trial. When the court was about to give the list of the witness to the jury to ascertain if the members of the jury had any affinity with the deceased, the intended appellant, or the witnesses, Mr Munroe made it clear that they were not going to call any witness.”
“The intended appellant cannot show that he was prejudiced in any way by the decisions made by his counsel on his behalf.
“As to the conduct of prosecution counsel, having read the transcript of the trial in its entirety there is no merit to the criticism by the intended appellant.
“The intended appellant has not identified evidence which was wrongly admitted and has identified no error in principle by the trial judge.”
The appellate court also determined that the term of imprisonment of 55 years was not unreasonable “having regard to the particular circumstances of this case and the established guidelines with respect to murder set out in the decision of Larry Raymond Jones and the court will not interfere.
