35-year-old Orin Jerrick, who was in 2016 found guilty of unlawfully killing minibus driver Gavin Fiffee, and was sentenced to 28 years’ imprisonment, is now asking the Court of Appeal to set aside his conviction and sentence. He has proffered several grounds for his request, with most of them arguing that the trial judge made several errors in law, which makes his conviction unsafe.
Jerrick, a gold miner from Ann’s Grove East Coast Demerara (ECD), fatally stabbed Fiffee, a 31-year-old father of three of Sideline Dam Beterverwagting ECD. The killing occurred on July 31, 2014, at the Plaisance minibus park in Georgetown.
According to reports, on the day in question, Fiffee was loading a minibus at the park, when Jerrick began urinating on the wheel of the vehicle. This angered passengers, and Fiffee confronted Jerrick, during which a heated argument erupted between them.
Sometime after, Jerrick stabbed Fiffee to the chest. The injured man was picked up by public-spirited citizens and rushed to the Georgetown Public Hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival. At the commencement of his trial at the High Court in Demerara, Jerrick was indicted for murder by State prosecutors. The jury, however, found him guilty of the lesser offense of manslaughter.
Following the jury’s verdict, Jerrick maintained that he was innocent of the crime. In fact, he declared, “I didn’t jook nobody.” In turn, Justice Navindra Singh told the convict that he had expressed no remorse even though he was found guilty by his peers. The judge imposed a sentence of 30 years and ordered that two years be deducted, which reflects the time Jerrick spent in pre-trial custody.
