Two men will serve a minimum of 25 years behind bars for the fatal shooting of 40-year-old father George Lynch.

However, Puisne Judge Carlisle Greaves lamented the limitations of the legal tariff, saying that under the circumstances of the case he was left with the feeling that the sentence — the maximum allowed by law — would be insufficient.

Wolda Gardner, 34, and Rickai Dickinson, 29, were convicted for the premeditated murder of Mr Lynch, who was gunned down in May of 2010 while socialising with friends in a neighbour’s yard.

Prosecutors alleged that Gardner orchestrated the shooting, while Dickinson was directly involved in the attack itself.

But the court heard Mr Lynch was not the intended victim of the shooting, which was supposedly linked to the Supreme Court trial of seven men for a gang attack. At the time of the murder, the jury in that trial was still in deliberation.

Mr Justice Greaves called the shooting an attack on not only an innocent father, but the justice system as a whole, intended to deliver a message to all those who may consider testifying.

He sentenced both men to life behind bars, ordering that each man serve at least 25 years of their sentence before being eligible for parole.

Gardner and Dickinson were further sentenced to ten years in prison for using a firearm to commit an indictable offence, ordering the sentences to run concurrently.