HEARSAY CANNOT COME TO COURT

‘Hearsay Cannot Come To Court’ – Judge Dumps Buckfield Case Over Missing Videographer, Pathologist
Published: Friday | March 8, 2013 2 Comments
Supreme Court judge Marva McDonald, in upholding a no-case submission for Detective Sergeant Lloyd Kelly, who was charged with murder based on the alleged video recording of an incident in Buckfield, St Ann, remarked yesterday that “hearsay cannot come to court”.

The judge said if someone took a photograph of an incident, then the person has to come to court.

Kelly was freed because the prosecution could not establish that the policeman murdered Ian ‘Chen-Singh’ Lloyd or contributed in any significant way to his death.

Kelly, who has 25 years’ experience in the Jamaica Constabulary Force, said he was happy that the case had ended and was looking forward to going back on the job and moving on with his life.

Following a no-case submission made by the defence team comprising Queen’s Counsels Churchill Neita and Delano Harrison and attorney-at-law Renae Barker, the judge outlined in detail why the case could not be left to the jury’s determination.

Kelly was accused of murdering Lloyd at Buckfield on July 29, 2010.

Prosecution witnesses testified this week in the Home Circuit Court that Lloyd was being beaten and stoned by residents in the community before the police came on the scene. He had allegedly stabbed to death 65-year-old Lovelita Wilson.

THREW STONES AT OFFICER

The witnesses said that Lloyd was armed with stones and a piece of a broken glass bottle and he began cutting at the police when they tried to apprehend him. They said Lloyd threw stones at Kelly and when one of the stones hit the policeman in the groin, they heard an explosion. One witness said after she heard the explosion, she saw Lloyd holding his shoulder.

A police witness who went to the post-mortem said the doctor removed two expended bullets from Lloyd’s body. The witness said one was taken from the abdomen and the other from the right knee. He said he placed the bullets in an envelope, labelled them and took them to the Government’s forensic laboratory.

Dr Dinesh Rao, who performed the post-mortem, could not be located and, therefore, the post-mortem report could not be tendered in evidence. The judge remarked that there was no evidence to establish cause of death, adding that the authorities must ensure that doctors in homicide cases attend court.

Rao left the island at the end of June last year after the completion of his three-year contract as the nation’s chief pathologist.

The judge said there was a break in the chain of custody of the bullets, and the policeman who took them to the laboratory was not available to testify. She said the prosecution would have a difficulty to negative self-defence and pointed out that all the prosecution witnesses sounded as if they were defence witnesses.

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