N
o reliable evidence, defence attorney says
Justice Charles Quin heard closing speeches last week in the trial of Leonard Antonio Ebanks, who is charged with the murder of Tyrone Burrell in West Bay on the evening of 8 September
, 2010.
He said he did not know what cases he was scheduled to hear in the coming days, so he was unable to say when he would be able to deliver his judgment. Not only did he have to review all of the evidence, but he would also give full reasons for his conclusions because Ebanks elected trial by judge alone. A preliminary court list showed he was scheduled to start a five-day attempted murder trial on 26 September.
In Ebanks’ trial, after Senior Crown Counsel Trevor Ward closed the case for the prosecution, defence attorney Martin Heslop submitted there was no case for Ebanks to answer (Caymanian Compass, 21 September). Justice Quin disagreed.
At that stage of the trial, he explained, he was not asking himself if he had reasonable doubt. The question was whether he was convinced there were no circumstances in which he could possibly convict. He said he could not find the evidence to be so weak or so discredited that he could reach that conclusion, and he ordered the trial to continue.
Mr. Heslop said the defence would call no evidence. In his closing statement, he told the court the Crown had to prove the defendant’s guilt – the defendant did not have to prove his innocence. He said Ebanks had given a full and consistent account in speaking with police informally and in his three interviews, which were part of the Crown’s case. He said there were powerful reasons why no reasonable person would conclude Ebanks was guilty of the fatal shooting – certainly not above a level of suspicion so that anyone could be sure.
He submitted the Crown’s two civilian witnesses were not reliable and there was no forensic evidence such as blood stains, DNA or gunshot residue to link Ebanks to the shooting.
The two civilians were Arlene White and Nora Ebanks. Ms White said she was in her employer’s kitchen when she saw Ebanks walk past the door and then she heard a gunshot about five seconds later. Ms Ebanks said she was in her brother’s yard when she heard a sound like a firecracker or a gunshot and then, about 10 seconds later, saw Ebanks come up a path from the other yard. Neither woman reported seeing him with a gun at the time and no gun was ever recovered.
Mr. Heslop said the evidence of Ms White was of such a fanciful nature that it fell short of providing a basis for reliability. She had told the court she met Mr. Burrell three Sundays before he was killed. She was reading her Bible and praying when she saw a vision of man who looked lost. She described the man to her employer and was told that sounded like Mr. Burrell, who was out in the yard at the time. Ms White said she sensed he was in danger and she prayed with him that day. On the evening he was killed, she had served him a burger she cooked and told him to leave the yard “because every time I see that youth I see death.”
Ms White’s evidence was that, two days after the shooting, Ebanks told her he had killed Mr. Burrell, Mr. Heslop reminded the court. He had asked her why Ebanks would confess to her and she had replied, “God make things to come out in light.” Asked if God had told Mr. Ebanks to confess to her, she had replied, “Yes, sir”.
“I do not wish to be unfair to her or her religious beliefs, but the court has to deal with reality, not imaginings,” Mr. Heslop said. He pointed to contradictions and inaccuracies in her evidence, saying each one by itself might be a small thing, but the cumulative effect should raise doubts about her reliability.
For example, Ms White had told the court she met Ebanks in March after telling police it was in April and then June.
When she told police about seeing Ebanks just before the shooting, she said he had on a black jacket. In court, she said she never said jacket — she told police he was wearing “a tall-sleeve shirt” and for some reason they wrote down jacket. In court, she used an expletive she said Ebanks had used when he told her he had killed the (blank) boy. But that term was not in her statement to police. And if Ebanks had made such an admission, the attorney wondered, wouldn’t it be expected she would have asked questions?
Ms White had said Ebanks confessed another crime to her also, something that occurred when she was off-Island. Yet records showed she was here when that incident occurred.
Mr. Heslop said without Arlene White there was no case. But he called her a fantasist, someone who believed things that could not be true or were unlikely to be true.
As to the second witness, the attorney said that it was difficult to see how Ms Ebanks could say she loved the defendant as a member of her family when she believed he had committed offences against her brother, her nephew and her boyfriend. He pointed out that she had first thought that the sound she heard was a firework and only realized it was a gunshot afterwards.
Further, the two witnesses contradicted each other, Mr. Heslop said. Ms White said when she saw Ebanks before hearing the gunshot, he was wearing a black baseball cap. Ms Ebanks said when she saw Ebanks after the gunshot, he was wearing a red baseball cap.
But even if the judge found that the two witnesses were reliable, all that indicated was that Ebanks was present at the scene – as were 10 or 20 other people – and it raised doubt as to whether Ebanks could physically have been the shooter. “Now we are not talking about whether it was possible [as at the no-case submission stage] but whether it was likely … Now you must be sure of his guilt.”
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