Man convicted after fourth murder trial gets life sentence

The St Andrew man convicted a second time for shooting a woman to death just metres from the August Town Police Station 13 years ago will have to spend more than two decades in prison for the crime.

Machel Goulbourne was given the mandatory life in prison and ordered to serve 25 years before he is eligible for parole when he was sentenced in the Home Circuit Court on Thursday.

Goulbourne was found guilty of murder in March for shooting Glenda Simpson several times inside her August Town, St Andrew home.

This marked the end of his fourth murder trial for the 2005 shooting.

"A long time you fi dead, gyal," Simpson's sister, Sunji Marrett, said she overheard Goulbourne saying after the shooting.

Goulbourne first went on trial in 2008, but that was aborted after one of the jurors reportedly visited the scene of the shooting and took pictures that were shared with other jurors.

At the end of his second trial in April the following year, a jury found Goulbourne guilty and he was later sentenced to life in prison, and ordered to serve 35 years before being eligible for parole.

But just over a year later, the conviction was overturned by the Court of Appeal, which ordered that "in the interest of justice," Goulbourne should get a new trial.

The third trial ended with a hung jury after the 12-member panel voted 7-5 in favour of a conviction.

But, once again, the convicted killer is not going away without a fight and has signalled, through his attorney, Valerie Neita-Robertson, that he intends to challenge his latest conviction.

"The witness lied in several important aspects. I don't think she was reliable; she was manifestly unreliable," Neita-Robertson told The Gleaner on Tuesday, in reference to Marrett, the main prosecution witness.

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