PLEA TWIST
Socialite Jasmine Hartin pleads guilty to shooting cop pal dead as she appears in Belize court for manslaughter charges
CANADIAN socialite Jasmine Hartin last night wiped away tears as she pleaded guilty to killing a cop in Belize - but is set to avoid jail.
Hartin, 33, entered the plea at the 11th hour on the day her trial over the shooting death of police superintendent Henry Jemmott in May 2021 was due to start at Belize’s Supreme Court.
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Judge Ricardo Sandcroft will sentence the former daughter-in-law of British-Belizean billionaire Lord Ashcroft for manslaughter by negligence on May 31.
Due to her guilty plea she is now set to receive a fine and may also be ordered to pay compensation to the victim’s family.
Hartin told reporters as she left court: “I just want Henry’s family to have peace now and want this whole thing behind all of us so we can heal.”
Jemmott’s family, including one of his five children and two of his sisters, sat in court and remained stony-faced as Hartin changed her previous plea of not guilty.
Earlier in the day Judge Sandcroft had scolded them for showing up in T-shirts in Jemmott’s memory.
After the hearing was adjourned in the morning so Hartin could consider whether to change her plea, the relatives came back wearing a change of clothes.
When Hartin entered her plea in the afternoon, the judge told her: “Jasmine Hartin, you have pleaded guilty to an indictment charging you with manslaughter by negligence.
“All that remains for me to do is to sentence you, which I will do on May 31 this year.”
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The court heard that the precedent in Belizean law is that a defendant who enters a guilty plea at this stage of a case will not face jail time but a fine instead.
Prosecutors had prepared a file with additional evidence which would have been presented if the case had gone to trial.
Judge Sandcroft said that he will be looking at Hartin “as a person” when he passes the sentence.
He told the court: “That’s what sentencing is about, it is not about exacting retribution for society.”
Giving his sentence indication, the judge ordered a victim impact statement and social inquiry report to be submitted by May 26.
Hartin’s lawyer OJ Elrington said outside court: “The sentence indication hearing is an opportunity for the judge to indicate the confines in which he will render his sentence.
“Once he said today that he will give a non-custodial sentence and that all the case law says that a guilty plea to a matter at this point in the proceeding shows that it should have a fine rather than confinement, he is limited to a fine.
“However the quantity of the fine is where he still has latitude and he has to go into further research to decide the quantity of the fine based on submissions that will be made later on, due by May 26.
“At the end of the day, as my client has consistently maintained, this is a most unfortunate set of circumstances.
“It is one for which she is truly remorseful, at the end of the day a life was lost, a life that can never be returned.
“She has indicated her remorse not only with her words but with her actions in trying to consistently providing assistance to the (Jemmott) family.
“She felt that this was the best decision for the family to be able to move on and for herself and her family to be able to move on.”
Elrington said the judge would also have to decide whether to impose compensation for Jemmott’s family in addition to a fine.
In a follow-up statement, Elrington said Hartin felt her decision to plead guilty is "the best possible outcome for all parties."
"After a long and painful battle, at times dealing with politics, power and corruption at its core, it is of course a great relief to finally put an end to this heart breaking and tragic accident involving one of her dearest friends," the statement read.
"Ms. Hartins hope is that by making this plea, healing and closure can begin for all affected by this tragic loss."
GRUESOME SCENE
At the time of the shooting, Belizean police officers rushed to the sound of gunfire, where they found Hartin drenched in blood near the beachfront home she shared with her partner Andrew Ashcroft.
found Jemmott’s lifeless body floating in the water off San Pedro with a single gunshot wound to the head.
Hartin told authorities that she was giving the superintendent a shoulder massage when he asked her to hand him his pistol, reported at the time.
She then alleged that the Glock service pistol accidentally went off and shot him in the back of the head.
Hartin claimed Jemmott then fell on her, and she pushed him off, leading to his lifeless body falling from the pier to the water.
In the aftermath of the shooting, rumors about Hartin and Jemmott ramped up.
However, Jemmott's sister, Marie Jemmott Tzul, told the that her brother knew Hartin but that there was no romantic relationship between the two.
Instead, Jemmott Tzul told the outlet that her brother was shot while "drinking with Lord Ashcroft's daughter-in-law (and) had a head wound like an assassination."
Hartin broke her silence over a year after the incident in an interview with CBS' in July 2022.
"It was such a blur. Umm, you know, and I think I was in shock," the mother-of-two told Sant.
On the night of the shooting, Hartin said she and Jemmott had been drinking before going to the pier, where she'd given him a shoulder massage.
She said he tried teaching her how to load and unload the magazine and bullets from his Glock 17 service pistol.
"I'm holding it like this on the top and like this, and I'm trying to get the magazine out," Hartin told the outlet, demonstrating the way she says she'd held Jemmott's pistol.
"Next thing I know, the gun went off."
When asked if she had her finger around the trigger, Hartin replied: "Not that I thought.
"I'd — I'm—I don't know. I — I — I mean, it was an accident , or the gun misfired. But consciously, did I pull the trigger? No." she added.
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“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about Henry, he was my friend, he was a protector," Hartin previously told the Mail.
Hartin was previously in a common-law marriage with Lord Ashcroft's son Andrew and shares six-year-old twins with him, but they have since separated and are currently locked in a custody battle.
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