Convicted hijacker can appeal 83-year jail term for attempted hijacking of Canadian airline
From Caribbean360
KINGSTON, Jamaica, Sunday August 23, 2014, CMC – The London-based Privy Council has granted leave to convicted hijacker Stephen Fray, to appeal his 83-year jail term for the attempted hijacking of a Canadian aircraft in the western city of Montego Bay in 2009.
Fray’s legal team is contending that medical evidence of his mental disorder was rejected, and the standard used to judge his mental condition had been outdated.
They argued that a narrow approach was taken in assessing his true mental state, and this error resulted in the conviction.
Fray, 26, will be represented at the Privy Council, the island’s highest court, by UK-based attorneys, but his local attorney, Jacqueline Samuels Brown, said the case would have far reaching implications.
“The modern approach in relation to psychiatry is to move away from the narrow concept of insanity and the adverse perception and to use the wider more inclusive concept of mental disorder and that is where the law has moved and that is why I say it will have implications not just for Fray but for the development of the jurisprudence in Jamaica and elsewhere,” she said.
Fray was convicted in October 2009, on eight counts for illegal possession of firearm, shooting with intent, robbery with aggravation, assault at common law and breaches of the Airport Act, arising from the attempted hijacking.
Although sentenced to 83 years, Fray is to serve 20 years because the sentences are to run concurrently.
Fray lost an appeal in Jamaica in 2011, to have the sentence and conviction overturned.
However, Fray and his attorney have maintained that he was mentally ill in April 2009, when he attempted to hijack the Canjet flight with 159 passengers and crew at the Sangster International Airport.
The court was told that Fray managed to breeze through security at Sangster International Airport with a loaded gun. He walked straight onto the parked Canjet plane, which had just arrived in Montego Bay from Halifax and was about to carry on to Havana, Cuba.
IMAGE: STEPHEN FRAY (FILE PHOTO)
