By LAMECH JOHNSON

Tribune Staff Reporter

ljohnson@tribunemedia.net

A MAN seeking to be exonerated of a murder conviction and subsequent 50-year-sentence at Her Majesty’s Prison had his appeal dismissed by the Court of Appeal yesterday.

Justices Stanley John, Abdulai Conteh and Neville Adderley were not persuaded by Mark Anthony Capron’s arguments that Supreme Court judge, Justice Vera Watkins, did not deal with the discrepancies in the case extensively.

Simms Ferguson, according to the evidence, was shot in the face and the chest with a shotgun following a scuffle with Capron while in Johnson Alley off Wulff Road on March 6, 2011.

He died of his injuries three weeks after the shooting.

Capron was initially convicted of the murder in October 2002 and was sentenced to death.

At that time, persons convicted of murder were automatically sentenced to death under Bahamian law.

However, the death sentence was overturned when Capron appealed to the Privy Council, who ordered a retrial in the matter.

Following a six-days retrial, Capron was again convicted of Ferguson’s murder on January 27, 2010.
Justice Watkins sentenced him to 50 years’ imprisonment in February 2011.

Capron and his attorney, Murrio Ducille, appeal the conviction and sentencing to the appellate court on a number of grounds, including that the judge did not deal extensively with the discrepancies in the case and that the sentence was harsh.

In the appeal court judges’ written ruling, they were of the view that the judge did deal with the discrepancies extensively in which she warned them of such and highlighted the discrepancies in the case.

Justice Adderley, who read the ruling, said the court was not persuaded that there was a miscarriage of justice.

The appeal was dismissed and the conviction and sentenced affirmed.