A murder conviction, which was upheld by the local Court of Appeal, is heading before the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), Barbados’ final court of appeal, for determination.
Last week, the Court of Appeal handed down its decision in the matter where lawyers for Vincent Leroy Edwards and Richard Orlando Cabbage Haynes, had appealed against their convictions and death sentences.
The appeal was heard by Chief Justice Sir Marston Gibson K.A., along with Justices of Appeal Sherman Moore and Sandra Mason, who found no merit in any of the grounds of appeal.
A jury found the appellants guilty in June 2013 of murdering Damien Alleyne at Rosemont, Deacon’s Farm, St Michael in August 2006. Alleyne was from Upper Carlton, St. James.
According to evidence presented during the trial, Alleyne had just left his girlfriend’s home at Deacon’s around 9.45 p.m. Sometime after 10 p.m., she heard a number of explosions which sounded like gunshots.
She called him on his mobile phone and, based on what Alleyne had told her, she left home to search for him and found him lying on the ground not far from her home.
Post mortem results showed that he died from a gunshot injury to the chest.
According to police evidence, the convicted men had told them that Alleyne was shot after Edward’s motorcycle had been stolen, as well as a “block gun”.
One of the main grounds of appeal submitted by attorneys-at-law Andrew Pilgrim QC, Angella Mitchell-Gittens, Carol Ann-Best and Keith Scotland, was that the conviction was based mainly on orals which police witnesses said both men gave and they recorded.
Those oral statements were unsigned.
Scotland had also argued that the oral statements had been obtained through trickery where police had told Edwards and Haynes that they had information about their involvement in the crime, when they had none.
Pilgrim and Mitchell-Gittens had submitted that the statements were never made by their clients.