Raziel Jeffers was found guilty of manslaughter on Thursday for his role in the killing of “numbers man” Marcos Duran, who was shot dead when an armed robbery went tragically wrong.
Jeffers did not pull the trigger and may not even have been present when Duran was fatally shot on the doorstep of a West Bay home in 2010.
Prosecutors said he planned the robbery, provided the guns and tipped off his accomplices about the victim’s movements as he made cash pickups for the underground lottery game. Because of his role in “masterminding” the robbery he can be held responsible for the killing, under Cayman Islands law. The 11-woman, one-man jury took just over three hours to find Jeffers not guilty of murder and convict him on the lesser charge of manslaughter.
Chief Justice Anthony Smellie discharged the jury and adjourned the case for sentencing until Friday morning.
Jeffers, who is already serving life sentences for the murders of Damion Ming and Marcus Ebanks, showed no emotion as the unanimous verdict was read out just after 4:30 p.m. on Thursday.
Jeffers, whose previous convictions were withheld from the jury for legal reasons, is the second man to stand trial for the killing of Duran.
Jordan Manderson was cleared of murder in 2011. According to evidence presented in Jeffers’s trial, at least five people were involved in the robbery plan. Only Jeffers has been convicted of any crime in connection with the offense.
To convict of murder, the jury would have had to be convinced that the death of Duran was a “probable consequence” of the robbery plan put into action by Jeffers.
To convict of manslaughter, they only needed to be satisfied that the plan put the victim in danger.
During the course of the eight-day trial the jury heard testimony from Jeffers’s ex-girlfreind, Meagan Martinez, that he had told her of his plan to rob the numbers man, who was a regular visitor to her aunt’s home in Maliwinas Way. She said he told her he had recruited some “soldiers” from the streets to “stick-up” Duran.
She said the plan was to frighten him and rob him of his takings. She told the court that Jeffers had told her how he waited inside her aunt’s apartment on the night of the killing and called his accomplices, who were lying in wait nearby, as Duran was leaving. The hold-up went badly wrong and one of the robbers was injured when a gun went off in the struggle, after which Duran was shot at least three times.
According to Ms. Martinez, she was summoned to Ebanks Road, near to the scene, to pick Jeffers up minutes after the shooting, She said he told her he didn’t know exactly what happened but something had gone wrong and the “poor numbers man” was dead, explaining that he jumped over his body on the way out of the apartment. She says he told her the full details in subsequent conversations after talking to his accomplices.
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