Hitman’s appeal denied

Simone Campbell-Collymore, whose confessed killer Wade Blackwood had his appeal rejected on Friday. 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 imposed on following his plea deal. In February 2024, Blackwood — who testified against his co-accused following a deal with prosecutors — claimed he was pressured into committing the act by Jim, who was supposedly the leader of a gang his brother had been involved with. Winston Walters, who was driving the taxi in which he and Simone Campbell-Collymore were shot dead by confessed killer Wade Blackwood. Blackwood claimed that Jim, in levelling death threats at him and his family, told him that he had to carry out the killing to repay his brother’s debt for a firearm that had been seized by the police. Blackwood, in negotiating with the prosecution, had 15 years shaved off his sentence, which now makes him eligible for parole after 20 years. At the end of the substantive trial, Collymore, who was slapped with two life sentences, was also sentenced to one year and six months for conspiracy and ordered to serve 46 years and six months before becoming eligible for parole. His co-conspirators Dwayne Pink, Michael Adams, and Shaquille Edwards were also handed life sentences. In the highly publicised incident, Campbell-Collymore and Walters were ambushed and shot dead outside the apartment complex where she lived with her then husband and children. The Crown, at the close of its case, established that Collymore ordered the hit to claim his wife’s multimillion-dollar life insurance policies from which their two children were entitled to 15 per cent each while Collymore was entitled to 70 per cent of the benefits. He was also listed as trustee for the children and their portion. Those policies were taken out by the couple three months before the murders. Collymore was collared by cops at Norman Manley International Airport while attempting to flee the island a day before his wife’s funeral. Earlier this month, Collymore, alongside his co-accused Pink, Adams, and Edwards, appeared before the Home Circuit Court again where they are all facing charges of illegal possession of firearm, shooting with intent, and conspiracy to murder with respect to an unnamed woman the businessman was in a relationship with at the time he orchestrated his wife’s death. A new conspirator, Carey Jonas, is also named on the indictment with respect to the new matter. On Thursday, Edwards, who had entered into plea negotiations with the prosecution and pleaded guilty to the new charges, was sentenced to six years and nine months for his part in that crime. Edwards, however, has already spent more than seven years in custody and is set to be released.