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HAMILTON, Bermuda, CMC - A 25-year-old British expatriate worker has had a 15-month jail sentence for causing a car crash that left one man dead and two people injured overturned by the Court of Appeal.

The prosecutor in the appeal conceded that trial judge Norma Wade-Miller did not properly direct the jury on how to handle the evidence in the Luke Armstrong case.

The panel of three judges cleared Armstrong, who works for an air conditioning firm, as a result, and he left court a free man. He later declined to comment on the case.

Armstrong was sentenced after being convicted by a Supreme Court jury last November of causing death and injury by dangerous driving. He was behind the wheel of a heavy truck that he was not licensed to drive when it collided with a car being driven by Winston Burrows in the early hours of April 5, 2009.

Burrows, who had a paralysed hand from a previous road accident 12 years earlier, was killed by the impact of the crash. He remained trapped in the vehicle as it burst into flames. Tests later showed he had alcohol and cocaine in his system.

His friend, Evelyn Rewan, 30, who was in the back seat of the car, suffered severe injuries including a broken neck, broken knee, broken toe, and a laceration that ripped her forehead open down to the skull.

Fellow rear-seat passenger Honest Masawi, a 46-year-old Zimbabwean, managed to escape with a bad cut over his eye.

Prosecution witnesses said Armstrong had been drinking, and that gouge marks and scrape marks on the road indicated his truck had been on the wrong side of the road when it hit Burrows’ car. There was also evidence he only had a licence to drive a light van, not a heavy truck.

However, the Court of Appeal suggested that the judge did not properly direct the jury on how to weigh up these factors when considering whether this amounted to dangerous driving in law.

Crown Counsel Cindy Clarke conceded that this was the case, and accepted that Armstrong should have his appeal upheld.

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