Latest update January 17th, 2025 6:30 AM
Death row inmate ‘Shark Oil’ appeals murder conviction
Arguing that trial judge Roxanne George admitted a caution statement into evidence which should have been excluded, and failed to put his defence to the jury, 70-year-old Herman Ally has appealed a murder conviction and death sentence imposed on him.
Ally, also known as, ‘Shark Oil’ of Rose Hall Town, Corentyne, Berbice, was found guilty of murdering fellow Rose Hall Town resident Randall Sandy, also known as ‘Randall Taylor’ between October 5 and 6, 2006. The conviction and sentence were handed down in 2012 following a trial at the High Court in Berbice.
The Court of Appeal will commence hearing arguments in the case on January 18, 2019. During Ally’s trial in 2012, State Prosecutors had argued that Ally murdered Sandy following a misunderstanding.
Herman Ally also known as ‘Shark Oil’
It was stated that on October 5, 2006 at around 16:00 hrs, Sandy was found with a wound in the vicinity of Ally’s yard. He was picked up and taken to his mother’s home before being rushed to the New Amsterdam Hospital where he died the next day. Ally was arrested that same day and was later charged with murder.
In Court documents seen by Kaieteur News, Ally’s lawyer is contending that the trial judge admitted into evidence a caution statement which ought properly to have been excluded, and further that the trial judge failed to permit his client to mitigate his defence.
In the grounds of appeal, the lawyer argues that the trial judge failed to put his client’s defence to the jury, and that the trial judge misdirected the jury on the law of self-defence and murder.
Though he was found guilty of the crime, Ally had maintained his innocence.
Then, he had told the Court, “I know to myself that at no time at all I had any implement or knife or whatever. I was not responsible for the killing of Randall Sandy. I swear on my two eyes, which are damaged, that he did not give a caution statement to the police.”
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