A FEW weeks back, the daughter of a murdered businessman contacted me and journalist Leonard Gildarie to discuss over the show, the Gildarie-Freddie Kissoon Show, her mental torment over the extremely light jail term the killer of her father received.
A month ago, she came to Guyana to speak to us after she read about the light sentence her father’s killer got, but her Berbice stay got complicated and she could not make our schedule at the studio.

Her dad owned a hotel on the beach at Number 63 village in Berbice. A young man attacked the elderly security rank, Harry Prashad and killed him, then entered the hotel and savagely tortured and brutally killed the owner, Vivekanand Brijbassi. Gomeswhar Perez pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Justice Simone Morris-Ramlall assigned four years in jail.
A High Court year is actually nine months. People with grammes of cocaine, with small amounts of cannabis, go to jail for longer jail terms.

Now, this man did not get into a fight and killed someone. He invaded private property, murdered the guard and the hotel owner in a most bestial manner in which body parts were found at the scene. After speaking to that daughter, I don’t think this young lady will ever be the same again. She cannot cope mentally with the verdict.

People get four years of imprisonment for possession of unlicensed firearms. An Amerindian man got two years in the Magistrate’s Court for possession of a spent shell. If you think that is an exaggeration, then think again. It happened.
Magistrate Faith McGusty decided on a jail term. Please see my column of Thursday, February 15, 2018, titled: “Jail for spent shell: We are heading for another bloody mayhem.” The famous Mashramani designer Bernard Ramsey wrote last week that nothing prepares you for Guyana.

Ramsay had politics in mind, but I have always argued in my columns that nothing prepares you for Guyana in the general sense, not only in politics. Our politicians are more rational people than Guyanese who operate in different spheres in the life of this country.

Now, on Thursday, July 20, Justice Priya Sewnarine-Beharry sentenced Raymond O’Selmo to 10 years which I remind you; a year is nine months. What did “O’selmo do? A young woman, Nadina Kalamadeen, a mother of five, was walking home when O’Selmo accosted her. She rebuffed him. He took out a knife from his pocket and stabbed her to death.
O’Selmo got 10 years for the crime (don’t forget a year is nine months) after pleading guilty. Is that all? No! Wait until you read who O’Selmo is.

He got 15 years for raping a 12-year-old girl. Then he got another jail term for discharging a loaded firearm. A sentence must be based on previous convictions. This is commonsensical. A recidivist receives a longer prison sentence based on past criminalities.
I ask by what logic a man can get 10 years for stabbing a mother of five children to death when he has a predatory past of raping a child and trying to kill another person? A mother is going home to her children, is molested on the roadway, she rebuffs her attacker, he kills her, and he gets seven and a half years.

I will resign from this column, and the Freddie Kissoon Show, if anyone can show me the evidence from another country where an accused rapes a 12-year-old, serves 15 years then kills a woman and gets seven and a half years in jail.
There is hardly a rape conviction where jail time is below 20 years. It was reported in the media last week that such a conviction resulted in life imprisonment. Who is Raymond O’Selmo? Is this man a special person in Guyana?

He gets 15 years for child rape which should have been 50 instead of 15. He gets a light sentence for discharging a loaded firearm, then he stabs a woman to death and gets seven and a half years. Why is O’ Selmo such a lucky person?
If Mr. Bernard Ramsey is reading this, he better move off of politics and put another context to the exclamation, “Nothing prepares you for Guyana.”
So, I ask the question: “Is a sentence shaped by previous conviction?” Should you not get a longer jail term if you are convicted of car-stealing and you have four previous incarcerations for the same offence? I end with a belief I will never change. They say never say never. But I will never change my belief in the death penalty.