THE Court of Appeal on Friday upheld the sentence and conviction of killer Wade Blackwood, who in 2021 was sentenced to life in prison after confessing to being the trigger man in the 2018 murder of 32-year-old businesswoman Simone Campbell-Collymore. The then 24-year-old, in a confession, detailed how he had been subcontracted to kill Campbell-Collymore in a $2-million murder-for-hire plot hatched by her then husband Omar “Best” Collymore. Thirty-six-year-old taxi driver Winston Walters was also killed during the incident which took place outside Campbell-Collymore’s Forest Ridge apartment in Red Hills, St Andrew, on January 2, 2018.
The two men involved in the shooting that day were identified by the police, from closed-circuit television footage in the vicinity, as Blackwood and a now-deceased Corporate Area don who went by the name Jim. Blackwood, who had been held by cops in April 2018, had pleaded guilty in January 2021 to two counts of murder and one count of illegal possession of firearm before the Home Circuit Court in downtown Kingston. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the murders, ahead of the other individuals involved in the plot, with 35 years on each count of murder before eligibility for parole, and eight years and six months for illegal possession of firearm.
Those sentences, however, were to run concurrently, making it so that he would serve 35 years before applying for parole. Friday, the Appeal Court, which heard the matter over two days, in handing down its decision ruled that based on the fact that Blackwood was resentenced on February 9, 2024, after a plea agreement was reached, the basis of his appeal was obsolete. Blackwood, through his attorney Shenieka Sparks, in supplemental grounds of appeal filed this year, had contended that a discount for his guilty plea was “unreasoned and inadequate”.
He further argued that the sentencing judge had erred in setting 30 years as a starting point to arrive at his ultimate sentence. According to Blackwood, compared to other similar cases, the discount was “out of parity”. The Jamaica Observer was told that when Blackwood was advised of the decision of the Appeal Court he accepted that he would not continue challenging his sentence and a notice of abandonment was filed on his behalf.
As such, Blackwood will serve 20 years before he is eligible for parole, as was the sentence…
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