St Thomas woman avoids prison after appeal court suspends wounding sentence

The Court of Appeal has left standing the unlawful wounding conviction against Carla May Crooks, but has stopped short of sending her to prison immediately, suspending her 18-month sentence for three years.

In a ruling delivered on Friday, the court said the jail term imposed on Crooks was out of step with the penalties handed down to her co-accused. Her appeal had been lodged in 2024, with submissions heard in December 2025.

The decision ends Crooks' challenge to her conviction in the St Thomas Parish Court on May 14, 2024. The case arose from a January 1, 2023 confrontation involving her half-sister, Wilma Leach.

Carla Crooks, her mother Curline Crooks and her father Leroy Crooks were all convicted of unlawfully and maliciously wounding Leach, who was the legal title holder for the property where the dispute took place. Curline Crooks received a non-custodial punishment, while Leroy Crooks was given a sentence that did not require him to go straight to prison. Carla Crooks, however, was ordered to serve 18 months' imprisonment at hard labour, a difference the appellate court later found hard to support.

Prosecutors said Carla Crooks and her parents went onto Leach's premises without permission and carried out a prolonged assault. Leach's evidence was that she was held around the neck, shoved into a fence, attacked both inside her house and outside in the yard, and was later hit at the back of her head with a stick by Carla Crooks.

Court records showed that Leach suffered a fractured skull, a broken incisor, several bruises and swelling to one eye.

The defence argued that Carla Crooks was trying to shield her father after Leach hit him with a machete. But the appeal judges said video footage weakened that version in important ways. The recording showed Carla Crooks holding a stick before Mr Crooks threw the first stone, striking Leach on the back and hand during the stone-throwing, and then moving in to hit Leach at the back of the head while Leach and Mr Crooks were struggling.

The Court of Appeal concluded that the parish court judge had applied the self-defence principles correctly. It said the judge properly treated the key issue as whether Carla Crooks' actions were meant to defend or to get back at Leach. The panel also found that the trial judge was entitled to accept Leach as truthful and dependable, given the support from the medical material and video recordings, and to reject the self-defence explanation.

Crooks also complained of judicial bias, pointing to comments the parish court judge had placed in her notes of the evidence. The appellate court rejected that ground, finding no real risk that the judge had been partial. It said the notes showed the judge's assessment of the case, not a fixed position, but warned that such working comments should not be included in the official record for appeals because their presence "may give rise to misunderstanding or unnecessary grounds of appeal."

The appeal judges were more troubled by the gap between the sentences. They accepted that Carla Crooks was the person who caused the fractured skull, but said the conduct of the three participants was not so different that it justified such sharply different results.

Justice Marcia Dunbar-Green, writing the unanimous 27-page judgment, said: "We are satisfied that the sentencing exercise was grounded in statute and established principles from case law … and broadly accords with comparable cases." She added: "We are, nonetheless, concerned by the significant disparity between the sentence imposed on the appellant and those imposed on her co-accused, Mr and Mrs Crooks, particularly as the learned judge of the parish court did not regard their respective roles as materially different."

Dunbar-Green also said that "while we acknowledge the advanced age of the appellant’s co-accused, both being in their seventies, this factor, though important, should not justify such a wide disparity in sentencing outcomes". Justices Paulette Williams and Nicole Simmons were the other members of the panel.

The court further observed that the parish court judge had not expressly dealt with some mitigating matters, including Carla Crooks' position as the main caregiver and breadwinner for a young dependent, the circumstances that led up to the offence, and the possibility of rehabilitation and reconciliation within the family.

Using 18 months as the starting point, and after weighing the aggravating and mitigating features, the Court of Appeal still settled on an 18-month term. It then suspended that sentence for three years and placed Crooks under supervision for 12 months.

Carla Crooks was represented by attorney Leroy Equiano. Kathrina Watson and Ashley Innis appeared for the Crown.