MILLER FRAMED LOL

Barbara Gayle, Justice Coordinator

Attorney-at-law Bert Samuels who was part of the legal team which successfully argued the appeal for alleged leader of the Spanish Town-based Clansman gang, Tesha Miller has declared that his client should not have been convicted in the first place.

While the Court of Appeal is yet to hand down its reasons for quashing Miller’s illegal possession of firearm and robbery convictions, Samuels told The Sunday Gleaner that he does not want the public to believe that the alleged gangster was freed on a technicality.

According to Samuels, there was the planting of evidence and outright lies by cops desperate to secure the conviction of Miller.

The attorney added that the identification evidence relied on by the prosecution was also weak.

He said during the trial, the complainant told the court that the first time he saw Miller was in June 2011, but it was proven that Miller was in custody at that time.

The complainant further claimed that the only other time he saw Miller was on the day that he was held up and robbed.

However, Samuels said, “during the trial the judge found that there was ‘orchestrated confrontation’ by the police between Miller and the complainant”.

Samuels said the investigating officer had testified that he was driving along the Salt Pond Road, in St Catherine with the complainant while searching for the motorcar which had been stolen from him.

The cop further told the court that he saw a group of men looking suspicious and stopped.

It later turned out that he had conveniently stopped in front of Miller’s yard and the alleged gangster was standing in the premises at the time giving the complainant a good opportunity to look at him.

Orchestrated confrontation

Supreme Court Judge Carol Beswick remarked at the trial in the Gun Court that the investigating officer had orchestrated the confrontation between the two men.

Samuels said another point which had formed a basis of the appeal was the fact that Miller had said that at 1 p.m. which was the time of the alleged robbery he was at the Spanish Town Police Station.

Miller said he was reporting to the police as a condition of his bail on a different charge.

The cops had first claimed that the time Miller reported was not recorded in the station diary but when his attorneys requested to see the book, l1:48 a.m. was recorded as the time Miller reported that day.

“The time recorded in the book would deny Miller of his alibi that he was at the police station,” noted Samuels as he hinted that the time had been put in the book after the fact by dishonest cops.

Miller, 30, was freed by the Court of Appeal last Friday.

He had been sentenced in 2011 to seven years in prison for illegal possession of a firearm and 15 years for robbery with aggravation.

The sentences were to run concurrently so he would have served 15 years.

The alleged Clansman gang leader was convicted for robbing a man of his motorcar in December 2010 in Spanish Town, St Catherine.

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