JUSTICE Roxanne George,imposing a historical sentence on teenager Rayan Ali at the Berbice Assizes on Thursday, ordered that he be imprisoned at the Court’s pleasure which is to be reviewed on the anniversary every two years.

That being so, Ali is to return to court on November 15, 2014, for a determination as to whether he should be released or not.
“We need to keep track. I don’t want him to fall through the cracks,” Justice George stipulated.
Earlier, Defence Counsel Kumar Doraisami had tendered the teen’s birth certificate which confirmed that he was 15 years nine months old at the time the offence was committed on July 10, 2011, having been born October 14, 1995.
Prior to sentencing the prisoner, the judge noted that he was much younger than she had initially thought, as the caution statement attributed to him had misguided the court. It indicated that the convict was 17 years old when the attestation was signed by him and witnessed by his mother, Shamdai Ali, on July 10, 2011.
The case for the Prosecution, presented by State Counsel Prithima Kissoon, was based on the evidence of eight witnesses, including two eyewitnesses.
Thirteen-year-old Gomattie Singh recalled that she was hanging laundered clothes on a line when she observed  Premchand Sugrim called ‘Copper’ walking along a dam at Number 53 Village backlands, Corentyne.
Having been earlier ruled as competent to give sworn testimony, the grade seven student told the mixed jury that she saw Ali known as Karran run out from nearby blacksage bushes and, before she could shout:”Copper watch out”, Karran struck the latter on his head with a three feet long iron pipe which he threw aside before fleeing the scene.
The witness said she called Bibi Baskh (Shabanna) who lives two houses away and told her Karran knocked Copper on the dam.
Bleeding
Singh said she cried and Shabanna went to the scene, placed Copper’s head on her foot and wrapped it with his shirt. His right side head was bleeding and his son called the police and they took him away.
Another eyewitness Ram Singh had recounted that, shortly before 10:00hrs, he was walking with the victim who had a cutlass.
Singh said Copper never used the weapon as it pitched out of his hand unto the dam when Karran hit him on his head.
However, in his unsworn statement from the dock, Ali, who attempted to lead self- defence, told the Court that, after he awoke at his uncle’s house, he left and went to his Aunt Kamani’s home where he had breakfast.
Moments later, he was standing on the middlewalk dam where he saw ‘Uncle Copper’ with a cutlass that he used to broadside him on his buttocks, telling him to return to his mother’s house at Black Bush Polder.
Ali said:”I walked away but he followed behind me cursing. I saw an iron pipe on the dam. I picked up the pipe and my Aunt Kamani hollered out. I dropped the pipe. Uncle Copper walked away and, shortly afterwards, he returned. I was sitting on the culvert and he fired a chop with the cutlass. I picked up the iron bar and gave him a lash to his head. He fell to the ground and I dropped the iron pipe. If I had not lashed him, he would have killed me.”
After the forty-eight-year-old Sugrim was struck on his head, on July 10, 2011, he was taken to New Amsterdam Hospital, from where he was transferred to Georgetown Public Hospital and succumbed ten days later.
A post mortem report, prepared by Government Pathologist Dr. Nehaul Singh, said the death was due to cerebral haemorrhage with necrosis as a result of blunt cranial trauma.
State Counsel Kissoon, rehashing the evidence, noted that if ‘Copper’ had intended to fatally injure his nephew, he would have done so while the killer was unarmed.
She said the convict confessed to hitting the now deceased on his head  and the autopsy is unchallenged that the fracture on the right side is as a result of being hit with the iron bar.
Earlier, the prosecutor had urged the jury to examine the testimony with mature deliberation, without sympathy for the accused or the deceased.
Ali was found guilty, on November 12, of killing his uncle by the mixed Berbice Assizes jury who returned a unanimous verdict.