The Court of Appeal has rejected the appeal of four men who were convicted for the murder of an 18-year-old man in Hanover, 15 years ago.
Jovine Jones, of Claremont, Hanover, was stabbed 42 times on October 9, 2009 and his body dumped beside a river.
In rejecting appeal, the Court of Appeal described the murder as heinous and gruesome and emphasised that the deceased was "essentially butchered".
The appellants, Alex Hemmings, Travis Findlater, Hockeal Scott and Denny Williams, of Claremont, had argued that the convictions should have been overturned on the basis that the judge erred in not upholding the no-case submissions and freeing them based on the circumstances in which the cautioned statements were given.
The lawyers for the men also submitted that the judge should have left manslaughter for the jury's consideration in the case of three of the men, Williams, Findlater and Hemmings.
But this was rebuffed by prosecutors who argued that a direction in manslaughter would not have been appropriate because the evidence pointed to the men as accessories to the murder.
Prosecutors had reported at the trial that Jones, who was also known as 'Tyson' and 'Heartless' was stabbed 35 times to the front of the neck and the other wounds were to the chest and left side of the back.
The men had given cautioned statements in which they admitted that Scott stabbed Jones and they all dragged the body through bushes to the river.
It was reported that the men had a dispute over a missing gun.
The men were convicted of the murder on November 2016 and sentenced in January 2017 to life imprisonment.
The judge ordered Scott to serve 30 years before he was eligible for parole, while the other men were ordered to serve 25 years before being eligible for parole.
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