Appeal court upholds 18-year sentence for macabre machete assault on sisters

A St Catherine labourer who had brutally injured two teenage sisters with a machete in a near-fatal attack after one of them threatened to expose his alleged sexual interest in her is to serve his 18-year sentence after the Court of Appeal ruled that it was not manifestly excessive.

Timothy Tulloch, who was the boyfriend of the siblings’ eldest sister and was living with their family, attacked the 11- and 13-year-old girls in the night with a machete, leaving them with multiple head injuries while dismembering three of one of the sister’s fingers in January 2020.

Tulloch, who had left the sisters for dead, carried out his vicious attack after the 11-year-old wrote him a letter that, according to the judgment, said that “if he do it again she is going to tell her parents, the police and he is going to see it on the news and she is serious”. This was after he had summoned her to his section of the house and she had ignored him.

The then 25-year-old was sentenced to nine years each on two counts of wounding with intent by Justice Courtney Daye in the St Catherine Home Circuit Court on July 2, 2021.

The judge, who had initially given an advanced sentenced indication (ASI) of 10 years on both counts, to run concurrently, had reconsidered that position after he was given all the facts in the case and instead handed down concurrent nine-year sentences based on the seriousness of the crime.

A part of Tulloch’s consideration, in appealing his sentence on the ground that it was manifestly excessive, was that he had a legitimate expectation of the 10-year sentence.

NO UNFAIRNESS

Attorney-at-law Oswest Senior Smith had also argued that the judge had erred in concluding that the sentence would be unjust without the consecutive recourse and further that the judge had failed to apply the correct methodology in calculating the sentence.

He had also recommended that the judge substitute the sentence with concurrent 15-year imprisonment terms.

However, the Court of Appeal judges, in dismissing the appeal, said, “In our view, there was no unfairness caused to the appellant by the learned judge’s departure from the ASI, and no merit in the argument that the appellant had a legitimate expectation, at sentencing, to the ASI. There is no merit in this aspect of the appellant’s complaint, conveyed through the submissions of his counsel, regarding the sentences imposed on him.”

The judges said that while the ASI is binding on a judge who signs off on it and any other judge who assumes the case in principle, except for exceptional circumstances, a judge can depart from it once the defendant is given the opportunity to consider a change of plea.

“The learned judge, therefore, in the public interest, could depart from the ASI with the necessary safeguards, that is without causing unfairness or undue prejudice to the appellant,” they said.

In the case at hand, the appellate judges noted that although the trial judge had not directly asked the defendant or his counsel to consider withdrawing or changing his plea, “he had mentioned five months before imposing the sentence that he was considering giving consecutive sentences in light of the grave circumstances of the offence, which had come to light after the ASI and the guilty plea and had also indicated that he was giving defence counsel the ‘opportunity’ to consider the matter”.

In respect to the sentencing, the judges after doing their own calculation which included a 20 per cent discount for Tulloch’s early plea and arriving at an 18-year sentence themselves, said the concurrent sentences of 15 years would not appropriately reflect the seriousness of the offence.

THE ATTACK

The prosecution’s case was that, on the day in question, after Tulloch was given the letter, he later attacked the 11-year-old after both siblings had retired to bed.

The 13-year-old, on hearing her sister’s scream, went to her room and saw Tulloch chopping the preteen in her face and head. He also choked her with her left hand while chopping her in the head. The 11-year-old later managed to escape but suffered “multiple lacerations to face, head, arms, multiple facial bone fractures, left mandible and left orbit”.

Tulloch then turned on the older sister and began to chop her. She held up her right hand to block the blows and, as a result, lost three fingers. She fell between the beds in the room, and Tulloch continued chopping her to the point where she lost consciousness.

Her injuries included “two lacerations to palm of right hand and distal one-third of forearm. Laceration to left hand, four and five digits fracture ... left forearm bone broken, fracture ... right forearm bone broken”.

She also sustained injuries to her ears, nose and throat, and had to undergo plastic and paediatric surgeries.

Both of the girls’ injuries were classified as “serious and likely to be permanent”.

Tulloch, after attacking the teens, had locked them up in the house and had left the premises. They were later found by their parents and rushed to the hospital.

tanesha.mundle@gleanerjm.com