DPP: Start at 35 years for killer

NOT 20, NOT 25, not even 30.

None of those figures, said the island’s top prosecutor, should be the starting point of any sentence for wife-killer Sean Anthony Watson.

“He lay in wait for her (his estranged wife Nicole Harrison-Watson),” Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Donna Babb-Agard, SC, told the No. 2 Supreme Court yesterday.

“He invaded her privacy; he waited for her in excess of four hours. Out of his own mouth he contemplated sexually assaulting her. He bound her hands and legs. She must have known she was going to die that night,” the DPP said.

“And therefore, 20 years cannot be a starting point; 25 years cannot be a starting point; 30 years cannot be a starting point. Thirty-five years has to be the starting point,” she declared, adding there should then be an uptick for the aggravating factors in the offence.

Babb-Agard, who appeared with Principal State Counsel Olivia Davis and State Counsel Dr Zoe King for the State, was responding to mitigation from attorney Brian Weekes, when Watson reappeared in court.

Watson, now 46, an architectural draughtsman, of Ridge View, Bannantyne Gardens, Christ Church, had pleaded guilty to the non-capital murder of Harrison-Watson on April 28, 2012.

Calling Watson a “highly intelligent, motivated, calculating and meticulous individual”, the DPP said if he had had his way, his estranged wife would have been “killed the week before”.

She called the murder “callous and heinous” and described the death of Harrison-Watson as the “loss of a young, vibrant 37-year-old woman”.

There was no provocation in the case, Babb-Agard said.

In fact, she added, the estranged wife “does not deserve to have the ‘Watson’ attached to her name”.

“This particular case has affected me because of the details that [Watson] described. After he had wrapped her face in plastic wrap, he stabbed her in the neck with a knife. And when he did not see blood, he stabbed her again until he saw blood.”

The DPP pointed to the fact that the two were separated and that Watson had “run home to his mother”. As a result, she said whatever relationship Harrison Watson had was her business. She further noted that after Watson stabbed the woman in her neck, he did not summon an ambulance or police.

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