The province’s highest court has upheld a 12.5-year sentence in a 2016 beating and stabbing death in Conception Bay South.
25-year-old Steven Miller bled out alone after being dumped on the side of a road in the early morning of July 30, 2016. He was earlier dragged out of bed and attacked by three men in a home invasion not far from the Seal Cove campus of College of the North Atlantic.
The men—Paul Connolly, Chesley Lucas, Calvin Kenny and Kyle Morgan—broke in to steal drugs and money.
All four were initially charged with first-degree murder, but three of them pled to the lesser charge of manslaughter in a joint submission with the Crown and defence. Morgan pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact.
Both sides agreed to 7.5 sentences for manslaughter, but Judge Colin Flynn didn’t, calling it a “chilling, gangland-like attack” while imposing 12.5-years instead.
Lawyers for Lucas were the first to appeal and test Fynn’s sentence, but that was dismissed this week, with the judges saying the lower sentence would’ve caused the public to lose confidence in the courts.
The court also noted the accused were given opportunities to withdraw their guilty pleas but chose not to.