Zeeks loses life sentence appeal

The appeals court dismissed the appeal brought by former Mathews Lane area don Donald ‘Zeeks’ Phipps on Friday.

Phipps is now serving a life sentence behind bars following his 2006 conviction for the murder of Rodney Farquharson and Dayton Williams.

Both men were beaten, tortured and shot in Matthews Lane and their bodies burnt in an open lot in downtown Kingston.  

Phipps' lawyers have been trying to get his conviction overturned.

His team had argued that his trial was a violation of his constitutional rights and amounted to an abuse of the processes of the court.

According to his team the cell site analysis obtained by prosecutors from one of the country's mobile phone providers, was illegally obtained under the Interception of Communications Act of 2002.      

That cell site data was used by the prosecutors to show the jury Zeeks' location at the time he killed two men in his downtown Kingston enclave on Matthew's Lane in 2005.

The act, which was passed by Parliament in 2002, gives the police the authority power to "bug" the phones of persons under investigation.

And businessman Stephen Grant, who was given as a life sentence in 2007 for the murder of a school boy also lost his appeal on Friday.

Grant was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Home Circuit Court a week after being convicted for the 1999 murder of a schoolboy who was out celebrating his 17th birthday. 

Grant was convicted on May 31 for the April 18, 1999 shooting death of Kymani Bailey of Dunoon Technical High School.

Bailey was gunned down near the Asylum Nightclub.

Grant turned himself in after the incident.

He was arrested and charged two weeks later.