Judge makes example of farm thief
Published:Thursday | August 5, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter
A resident magistrate has sent a strong message that praedial larceny will not be tolerated by sentencing a man to 18 months' imprisonment for reaping almost the entire yam crop of a Trelawny farmer.
Radcliffe Plummer, a 43-year-old woodworker of Durham, Trelawny, had pleaded guilty to praedial larceny when he appeared last month in the Ulster Spring Resident Magistrate's Court in his home parish.
Plummer, who is the father of six children, had said he would ask his relatives for money to compensate the complainant and the case was put off to July 29.
Plummer subsequently paid complainant Vinton Gordon $50,000 as compensation. He admitted one previous conviction for praedial larceny committed in 2008.
165 lbs of yam
Gordon said that on May 19 at 5:30 p.m. he went to his field at Durham in upper Trelawny where he saw Plummer digging his yams. After watching him for 15 minutes he called the police. Special Corporal Desmond Barkley and Special Constable Kenroy Bucknor arrived on a motorbike within a short time. Plummer was told to drop the machete and stick he was using to reap the yams. He was taken into custody and charged with praedial larceny of 165 lbs of yam.
Gordon told the court that the yams Plummer reaped represented most of his crop. He said he had lost yams to thieves on many occasions, the last time being in January this year.
He said he "trusted yam head" and planted them but, up to now, was not able to pay for them.
The case took a dramatic turn when Resident Magistrate Sheron Barnes said it was time for Plummer to be sentenced.
Gordon got up in court and made an impassioned plea for Plummer to get a non-custodial sentence. Gordon said he had known Plummer for more than 20 years and, in begging for leniency, disclosed that Plummer had children to send to school and had woodwork to complete for customers.
However, the resident magistrate, who was visibly incensed by Plummer's brazen act of larceny, said Plummer was depriving a hard-working farmer of the fruits of his labour.
"He should have considered his family and customers before he embarked on reaping what he did not plant," Barnes said before sentencing Plummer to 18 months.