Two weeks after being found guilty of murdering Melissa Payne during the course of a robbery at the Agricola Public Road on November 5, 2008, Jermain Savory was on Monday morning sentenced to 15 years in prison by High Court Judge James Bovell-Drakes.
Jermain Savory
Despite the accused proclaiming his innocence, the 12-member jury unanimously found the 30-year-old father of one guilty at the end of the weeks-long trial in December.
The State’s case was that Savory – in the company of at least one other person –murdered Payne after the woman and her reputed husband, John Fraser, had stopped at Agricola, East Bank Demerara, on their way to Georgetown to correct a mechanical fault in the Canter truck, in which they were travelling.
Reports were that while Fraser was attending to the vehicle around 08:30h on the day in question, armed bandits approached them. Fraser managed to escape, but 27-year-old Payne, from Den Amstel, West Coast Demerara, was eventually shot and killed after she held on to her bag that reportedly contained cash and valuables.
The court was told on Monday that the deceased woman loved gardening and that her relatives were still grieving the loss of their loved one. Meanwhile, in the probation report, the court heard that Savory, an Agricola native, exhibited “strange” behaviour growing up and into his early adulthood. Prison officials also corroborated that the defendant’s behaviour was strange.
The probation report further highlighted that Savory came from a home which had both mother and father, but he dropped out of the Sophia Special School as a teenager. He worked in masonry, as a fisheries labourer and as a Route 42 minibus conductor. He also admitted that he was a neighbourhood thief who smoked marijuana, but held out that he was innocent of committing Payne’s murder.
The former football player told the probation officer that he wanted to be reunited with his family.
However, the Judge noted that Savory’s crime was very serious and a strong signal needed to be sent. He started the sentence at 33 years, but subtracted 10 years for the amount of time that Savory spent awaiting trial. The Judge then subtracted eight years from the sentence, which gave a total of 15 years that the killer will spend behind bars. Savory thanked the Judge as he was led out of court by Police, but his relatives were saddened by the sentence, claiming that their relative was jailed for something he knew nothing about.
Savory was represented by Attorney Maxwell McKay, while the Prosecutors for the State were Mandell Moore and Orinthia Schmidt. (Shemuel Fanfair)
