And while no one has been charged for that murder today a man was sentenced to decades in jail for one he committed 8 years ago.
30-year-old John Chessman Jr. had been accused and acquitted of 3 murders in the past, but because he pleaded guilty to the 4th, the Supreme Court has sentenced him to spend 35 years in prison.
In August of 2012, a 32-year-old Chinese businessman, Jiantao Yang, known as "Kenny", was inside his store, E-Buy Supermarket, on Crab Catcher Street in Ladyville.
Video surveillance captured 2 robbers who entered the store pretending to be customers, and then started to rob the place. The footage showed that the victim did not resist or threaten the men, and even though he complied, the gunman shot him in the back of the head before running off.
Using this surveillance footage, Police tied Chessman and Dillon Clark to this armed robbery-turned-murder, and before the trial could start against him, Chessman pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter back in May of 2019. His sentencing for that crime was held today.
During his guilty plea in 2019, Chessman told the court, quote, "I am sorry for my action. There is nothing I could say that could justify what I did. I had no right to enter the man's establishment and deprive them of their valuables, and while doing so, I took something from someone that was so precious like a life…"
Because he pleaded guilty and saved the court time, the judge subtracted 5 years from his sentence, and another 8 years and 5 months for the time he spent on remand, while he was awaiting trial. That means he has to spend 22 years more in prison.
As reported, this is the 4th murder that he has been accused of. In 2005, he was charged along with his older brother for the killing of 20-year-old Mara Noami Garcia, whose throat was slit with a samurai sword. Then in 2008, one month after he was found not guilty of that murder, he was arrested and charged with the double murder of 19-year-old Karen Crawford and 44-year-old Maurice Cadle. He was acquitted in a trial before Justice Adolph Lucas in May 2012. Several months later, he was charged with the killing of Jiantao Yang, for which he pleaded guilty.
Dillon Clarke, Chessman's co-accused for the murder of Jiantao Yang, is still before the Supreme Court awaiting the completion of his murder trial. He has attempted to plead guilty to robbery, but the DPP's Office rejected that plea.
