A man has been cleared of manslaughter after the Court of Appeal ruled that a jury had been misdirected by a judge.
The three-strong panel of judges accepted the argument that Eric Williams-Soto was not aware his co-accused Justin Jackson had a loaded gun, which was used to shoot Harry Elliot Jr., a retired prison officer, during a bungled robbery of a premises where ‘numbers’ – illegal lottery tickets – were being sold.
The two were originally charged with murder, but the jury convicted Williams-Soto and Jackson of manslaughter in November 2023. Jackson, claiming he’d slipped on a wet floor, maintained his weapon had fired by accident, shooting Elliott, who was 62, in the head during the botched hold-up on 25 April 2022.
The judgment, written by appeal court judge Sir Anthony Smellie, said that Williams-Soto’s defence was that he did not know Jackson had a firearm with him.
He added that, at trial, Williams-Soto had denied a suggestion by the prosecution that both men had been told by another, Caine Thomas, who supplied the weapon, that the gun was unloaded.
Thomas was never arrested or called to testify and died a few days after the event after he was shot in an unrelated incident.
Smellie wrote, “There was no evidence that such a conversation had in fact taken place. This was merely a suggestion from counsel … an evidential basis does not include mere suggestions by cross-examining counsel.
“On that basis alone, it must therefore be concluded that the direction given by the trial judge was wrong in principle.”
Williams-Soto claimed no knowledge of gun
But Smellie said the “more telling point” was that Williams-Soto had insisted he did not know about the gun.
“The direction therefore went to the heart of his defence,” he said. “It effectively cautioned the jury to be careful about accepting his evidence on the crucial issues of his knowledge of the presence of the firearm and whether it was loaded, while, for the reasons identified above, being of no significant value to Jackson.
“Not only did Jackson admit to carrying the gun, but there was also the evidence of the cranking, or racking, of the slide mechanism for selecting a round, from which the jury may well have found that Jackson believed it was loaded, even while being in doubt as to whether he intended to shoot.”
Smellie wrote that, taking all the circumstances into account, it was “impossible to resist” the conclusion that the jury direction should not have been given.
He said, “It risked, in the eyes of the jury, the appellant’s defence, even while it could have been of only marginal benefit to his co-defendant’s Jackson’s defence.”
Smellie underlined that Williams-Soto’s conviction for manslaughter rested on the belief that he had knowledge of the gun and also knew it was loaded.
He wrote, “There simply was no evidence as to that latter state of mind, barring the suggestion from counsel which, although he rejected it and despite its dual potential for being both incriminatory – knowledge that there was in fact a gun – and exculpatory, belief that the gun was unloaded, was not admissible evidence.
“Apart from being an improper basis for the direction, it should therefore not have been left to the jury for consideration as evidence capable of undermining credibility.
“That being the case, the conviction for manslaughter cannot stand.”
Unlawful-firearm possession conviction upheld
Jackson had been found guilty two years ago of firing the shot that killed Elliott at a numbers shop off School Road in George Town.
But the jury accepted evidence that he fired by accident and that he was confronted unexpectedly by Elliott as he attempted to leave the premises.
Both men were also found guilty of unlawful possession of a weapon and the appeals panel upheld Williams-Soto’s conviction on that charge and the original 10-year jail sentence will stand.
Smellie wrote, “We consider in all the circumstances of the case, the jury were entitled to come to that conclusion.
“Indeed, it was an irresistible conclusion, given the implausibility of the applicant’s defence that the intention was to carry out the robbery ‘bare-handed’ and given, moreover, that even on his own case, he and Jackson were together with Thomas in the car at all times from inception of the plan to commit the robbery … .”
Smellie added that Jackson must have been handed the gun by Thomas at some stage during the journey.
He wrote, “In those circumstances, the jury was obliged to conclude that the gun was handed over to Jackson by Thomas in the applicant’s presence and so with the certain knowledge that it had been done.”
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