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By Annan Boodram |
Jacquelyn Camille Robinson was a 23-year-old student at the Howard University Medical College in Washington, D.C., one of the foremost black institutions in the United States, when her 18-month relationship with a celebrated doctor 20 years her senior ended in a furious argument in September, 1984.
Dr. Henry Lloyd Garvey, 46, a Jamaican-born physician, researcher and highly regarded professor, refused to leave his wife of 11 years to marry Robinson.
As Henry Lloyd Garvey pleaded on his knees during a confrontation in her apartment in suburban Maryland, his young mistress pointed a gun at his head and screamed, "I'm going to kill you if you don't leave your wife,'' a Maryland police report states.Then she pulled the trigger, police said, and a bullet from the .38-calibre handgun Dr. Jacquelyn Robinson held, struck Garvey's left leg, just above the knee, traveled up the limb and exited out of the upper thigh. The bullet re-entered his body in the stomach and stopped near his spine. The report provides no explanation as to how Garvey was shot at that upward angle when he was on his knees.
Garvey later told police from his hospital bed, that Robinson then came closer and again aimed the gun at him. He told detectives that he thought she'd "finish (him) off'' but that she came close enough that he could grab for the gun. After the attack, the professor at Howard University in Maryland - where Robinson was a 24-year-old student - managed to drive himself to hospital where he slipped in and out of a coma before dying a year later.
Robinson was convicted in January, 1985 of assault, malicious wounding and a firearms charge and sentenced to five years in jail. She was acquitted of attempted murder at a trial while Garvey was alive by claiming self-defense to avoid a beating from him. She began serving a five-year prison sentence but was released on $500,000 (U.S.) bail while she appealed. But when Garvey died, she was charged with second-degree murder.
While on bail pending the appeal of her conviction, Dr. Robinson slipped back into the Bahamas. She studied, worked and travelled with impunity for more than 15 years.
For a time she was employed on a work-study program in Ottawa. The 41-year-old first-year resident at Ottawa's Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario - where she was specializing as a pediatrician - was arrested on Dec. 30 at Pearson International Airport after being stopped by officials as she tried to fly home to the Bahamas for a vacation.
Initially her family vowed that they'll fight her extradition from Canada to the United States.
"She was acquitted of attempted murder and she cannot be tried for the crime twice,'' Robinson's brother George told Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper from Nassau, capital of the Bahamas in December 2000. "It's double jeopardy.''
But subsequently, her relatives stated that Ms. Robinson would not fight extradition to the US. "This is a part of her life she knew was coming," her brother told reporters after she appeared in a Toronto court in early January. "She is resigned to her fate. . . . She is a very strong person."
Then on February 1, Robinson walked into a Toronto courtroom and gave her consent to be returned to Maryland to begin serving a five-year sentence on a related assault charge, while she awaited trial on the murder charge.
Her brother said U.S. officials had every opportunity to request her extradition from the Bahamas, where Robinson lived for the past 14 years, but didn't. Her family claims she even tried to fly back to the United States for an appeal of her case but was turned back at Nassau International Airport by U.S. officials.
"She is not a fugitive,'' Robinson's sister, Theresa Rogers insisted to the Toronto Star in January. "She was never running from the law. She was always here."
Ms. Rogers later acknowledged that the family had been trying to negotiate with Maryland officials for a U.S. return, though only for the appeal of her assault charges, not a murder trial.
As time went on, and no request for an extradition came, she said Robinson and her family thought U.S. officials had forgotten about her case and dropped it. Robinson even applied for a U.S. visa and visited the country while supposedly being wanted.
In the Bahamas, Robinson, the youngest of nine siblings, taught in both primary and high schools, worked in a pharmacy, went to the University of the West Indies in Jamaica - where she became a doctor - and worked in public health at a Nassau hospital.
Her sister, Ms. Rogers, 53, said Robinson never married or had children. "Her career was everything to her."
In April, Robinson applied for a visa and went to Canada as part of a government exchange between the Bahamas and the University of Ottawa and the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario.
Toronto police said she never indicated in her application form that she was wanted on a warrant for murder.
Colleagues at the Ottawa hospital described her as hard-working and well-liked, and they were shocked to learn that she had been arrested as a fugitive.
"Everything this young physician had done, both working with her peers and patients, has been exemplary,'' Cardiff said
In custody, Ms Robinson pleaded to the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced on December 21.
Her brother, George Robinson Jr., of Nassau, said that considering time already served, his sister should be eligible for parole in about two-and-a-half years.
Her brother, Eugene Robinson, a bookseller in Nassau, was furious at the court decision.
"I was looking for deportation. The school was negligent in hiring a perverted professor," he said. "He was twice her age. He should have been kicked out of school."
He said the family is seeking further legal advice.
"It's not going to end there, it's definitely not going to end there," he said.
Dr. Garvey's family could not be reached for comment. They have said in the past that there was no relationship -- that Robinson was delusional and infatuated. The facts before the court state that the two did carry on an affair for more than a year.
Both families are prominent in the Caribbean. Robinson's father is a multimillionaire real estate magnate in Nassau. The Garvey clan is descended from the first settlers of Jamaica.
Dr. Garvey was four times named teacher of the year, four times researcher of the year and was a prolific writer for prestigious medical journals.
A Washington Post article, referred to him as an "award-winning, high-energy, upwardly mobile member of the Howard University medical school faculty."
Less flatteringly, he was described as a married man who cheated on his wife and was named in a $3-million sexual-harassment suit.